San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
From Nuremberg trials to lifelong quest for peace
The lone surviving Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor, Benjamin Ferencz, is soon to turn 102. He is a national treasure.
Born March 11, 1920, in the Transylvania region of what was then Hungary, Ferencz is living testimony to the quest for justice and peace.
His family emigrated to the U.S., settling in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City, when Ferencz was only 10 months old. Ferencz proved to be a good student, graduating from City College of New York and gaining admission to Harvard Law School, where he studied under the legendary Roscoe Pound.
Following law school graduation in 1943, he joined the U.S. Army and was sent to the war in Europe. As described on his website, Ferencz participated in battles “from the beaches of Normandy, through the Maginot and Siegfried Lines, across the Rhine at the Remagen Bridge, and the final Battle of the Bulge at Bastogne,” He was awarded five battle stars.
Toward the end of the war he investigated Nazi war crimes in preparation for the Nuremberg trial of Hermann Göring and 23 other top Nazis. Ferencz investigated concentration camps, concluding “they were all basically similar: dead bodies strewn across the camp grounds, piles of skin and bones cadavers piled up like cordwood before the burning crematoria. … I had peered into Hell.”
Then, at 27, Ferencz was appointed chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen trial, which held accountable Nazi commanders who oversaw the mobile killing squads in the first phase of the Holocaust. Those million-plus
murders of Jews, Roma and
Sinti, communists and Soviet intellectuals have been referred to as the “Holocaust by Bullets.”
The Einsatzgruppen trial was one of 12 “subsequent Nuremberg trials” that occurred after the original International Military Tribunal of Göring and others. The subsequent trials were overseen by U.S. Gen. Telford Taylor.
All 22 defendants in Ferencz’s trial were found guilty of various crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Associated Press called it “the biggest murder trial in
history.” Thirteen defendants were sentenced to death. Four were executed. It was Ferencz’s first criminal trial.
The remaining 75 years of Ferencz’s life have been devoted to working toward “law not war.”
As he has reflected: “Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task. And I also learned that if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law, the same cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible might one day destroy the entire
human race.”
Ferencz became a leading proponent for the International Criminal Court, which was eventually established in 2002. Under President George W. Bush, the U.S. signed the treaty but did not ratify it.
Ferencz has concluded this was a mistake, that “law must apply equally to everyone” and the U.S. should join the ICC.
In the preface to a 2018 book about international criminal justice, Ferencz wrote that “warmaking itself is the supreme international crime against humanity” and “it should be deterred by punishment universally, wherever and whenever offenders are apprehended.”
It is apparent from reading Ferencz that his experiences as a young soldier made a permanent and horrifying impression that has never left him: “Camps like Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Dachau are vividly imprinted in my mind’s eye. Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly vision I can never forget.”
His hope in the Einsatzgruppen trial “was to help deter the repetition of such horrors in the future.” He wanted to “do whatever I could to help lay a foundation for a more humane world than the one that had indelibly traumatized me during World War Two.”
Ferencz has made his quest for justice and peace today to be as important as his prosecution of war criminals in Nuremberg years ago. He shows that a person’s contribution can literally last a lifetime.
By just about any measure, Ferencz’s life has been a rich and productive one. He married his childhood girlfriend, Gertrude Fried, in 1946. They had four children and were married “without a quarrel” until Gertrude’s death in 2019.
If the first part of Ferencz’s story is notable for Nuremberg, the last part is notable for his books, lectures and teaching. In “A Common Sense Guide to World Peace,” he explains: “Being a Prophet of Peace is not very profitable, but the work is steady.”
Ferencz’s wish is for world leaders “to overcome their fears and reconcile their differences so that all who dwell on this planet may live together in peace and dignity.”
Oh, if only the world had more people like Ben Ferencz.