| Ben Ferencz | |
 | |
| Birth: | 11 March 1920 Csolt, Kingdom of Hungary (now Ciolt, Somcuta Mare, Romania) |
| Death: | 7 April 2023 Boynton Beach, Florida, USA |
| Age: | 103 years, 27 days |
| Country: |  ROU USA
|
| Centenarian | |
Benjamin Berell Ferencz (11 March 1920 – 7 April 2023) was an American centenarian and lawyer. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the chief prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, one of the 12 Subsequent Nuremberg Trials held by the U.S. authorities at Nuremberg, Germany. Later, he became an advocate of international rule of law and for the establishment of an International Criminal Court. From 1985 to 1996, he was adjunct professor of international law at Pace University.
Biography[]
Early life and education[]
Ferencz was born on 11 March 1920, in Csolt, Szatmar County, Kingdom of Hungary, located close to the historical Transylvania region (today part of Somcuta Mare, Romania). A few months later, Transylvania was ceded to Romania under the Treaty of Trianon (1920), the result of World War I. When Ferencz was ten months old, his family emigrated to the United States, which, according to his own account, was to avoid the persecution of Hungarian Jews by Romania after Romania gained formal control of Transylvania and Eastern Hungary.
The family settled in New York City, where they lived on the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
Ferencz studied crime prevention at the City College of New York, and his criminal law exam result won him a scholarship to Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he studied under Roscoe Pound and also did research for Sheldon Glueck who, at that time, was writing a book on war crimes. Ferencz graduated from Harvard in 1943. After his studies, he joined the U.S. Army. His time as a soldier in the army began bleakly with a job as a typist in Camp Davis in North Carolina. At that time, he was not familiar with using a typewriter, and he couldn't fire a weapon. His job duties also consisted of unceremoniously cleaning toilets and scrubbing pots and floors. In 1944, he served in the 115th AAA Gun Battalion, an anti-aircraft artillery unit.
In 1945, he was transferred to the headquarters of General Patton's Third Army, where he was assigned to a team tasked with setting up a war crimes branch and collecting evidence for such crimes. In that role, he was sent to the concentration camps that had been liberated by the U.S. army.
Nuremberg trial prosecutor[]
On Christmas 1945, Ferencz was honorably discharged from the Army with the rank of sergeant. He returned to New York, but was recruited only a few weeks later to participate as a prosecutor (and now made a full Colonel as part of his agreeance to go) in the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials in the legal team of Telford Taylor. Taylor appointed him chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen Case —Ferencz's first case. All of the 22 men on trial were convicted; 13 of them received death sentences, of which four were eventually carried out. Apart from East Germany, they were the last executions performed on German soil, and in the federal republic.
In a 2005 interview for The Washington Post, he revealed some of his activities during his period in Germany by way of showing how different military legal norms were at the time:
Ferencz stayed in Germany after the Nuremberg Trials, together with his wife Gertrude, whom he had married in New York on March 31, 1946. Together with Kurt May and others, he participated in the setup of reparation and rehabilitation programs for the victims of persecutions by the Nazis, and also had a part in the negotiations that led to the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany signed on September 10, 1952 and the first German Restitution Law in 1953. In 1956, the family—they had four children by then—returned to the U.S., where Ferencz entered private law practice as a partner of Telford Taylor. While pursuing claims of Jewish forced laborers against the Flick concern (the subject of the Flick trial), Ferencz observed the "interesting phenomenon of history and psychology that very frequently the criminal comes to see himself as the victim".
Role in forming the International Criminal Court[]
Experiences just after World War II left a defining impression on Ferencz. After 13 years, and under the impression of the events of the Vietnam War, Ferencz left the private law practice and henceforth worked for the institution of an International Criminal Court that would serve as a worldwide highest instance for issues of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
He also published several books on this subject. Already in his first book published in 1975, entitled Defining International Aggression-The Search for World Peace, he argued for the establishment of such an international court. From 1985 to 1996, Ferencz also worked as an adjunct professor of international law at Pace University at White Plains, New York.
An International Criminal Court was indeed established on 1 July 2002, when the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court came into force. Under the Bush administration, the U.S. signed the treaty, but didn't ratify it. The administration of George W. Bush concluded a large number of bilateral agreements with other states that would exclude U.S. citizens from being brought before the ICC.
Ferencz has repeatedly argued against this procedure and suggested that the U.S. join the ICC without reservations, as it was a long-established rule of law that "law must apply equally to everyone", also in an international context. In this vein, he has suggested in an interview given on 25 August 2006, that not only Saddam Hussein should be tried, but also George W. Bush because the Iraq War had been begun by the U.S. without permission by the UN Security Council. He also suggested that Bush should be tried in the International Criminal Court for '269 war crime charges' related to the Iraq War.
In 2013, Ferencz stated once more that the "use of armed force to obtain a political goal should be condemned as an international and a national crime."
Ferencz wrote in 2018, in a preface to a book on the future of international justice, that "war-making itself is the supreme international crime against humanity and that it should be deterred by punishment universally, wherever and whenever offenders are apprehended".
Later years[]
In 2009, Ferencz was awarded the Erasmus Prize, together with Antonio Cassese; the award is given to individuals or institutions that have made notable contributions to European culture, society, or social science.
On 3 May 2011, two days after the death of Osama bin Laden was reported, The New York Times published a Ferencz letter which argued that "illegal and unwarranted execution – even of suspected mass murderers – undermines democracy". Also that year he presented a closing statement in the trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo in Uganda.
On 16 March 2012, in another letter to the editor of The New York Times, Ferencz hailed the International Criminal Court's conviction of Thomas Lubanga as "a milestone in the evolution of international criminal law".
In April 2017, the municipality of The Hague announced the naming of the footpath next to the Peace Palace the Benjamin Ferenczpad ("Benjamin Ferencz Path"), calling him "one of the figureheads of international justice". The city's Deputy Mayor Saskia Bruines (International Affairs) traveled to Washington to symbolically present the street sign to Ferencz.
In 2018, Ferencz was the subject of a documentary on his life, Prosecuting Evil, by director Barry Avrich, which was made available on Netflix. In the same year, Ferencz was interviewed for the 2018 Michael Moore documentary, Fahrenheit 11/9.
On 20 June 2019, artist & sculptor Yaacov Heller honored Ferencz -- presenting him with a bust he created -- commemorating his extraordinary life dedicated to genocide prevention.
On 16 January 2020, The New York Times printed Ferencz's letter denouncing the assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, unnamed in the letter, as an "immoral action [and] a clear violation of national and international law". He became a centenarian two months later. Six months later on 7 September, the documentary Two Heads Are Better Than One: Making of the Ben Ferencz Bust, starring Ferencz and sculptor Yaacov Heller, had a world premiere, produced by Eric Kline Productions and directed by Eric Kline.
On 22 June 2021, he became the first recipient of the Pahl Peace Prize in Liechtenstein.
In March 2022, an audio clip of Ferencz was played during the Eleventh emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly and he later gave an interview to BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He also said that Vladimir Putin should be 'behind bars' for his war crimes, and further said that he was "heartbroken" over atrocities in Ukraine.
On 7 April 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis awarded Ferencz the Governor's Medal of Freedom at a ceremony held at Florida Atlantic University.
In September 2022, Ferencz appeared in the Ken Burns documentary, "The U.S. and the Holocaust."
In December 2022, Ferencz was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
In January 2023, Ferencz appeared in the David Wilkinson documentary, "Getting Away with Murder(s)".
In March 2023, in what would become one of his last public appearances, Ferencz presented a video clip of welcome to participants at The Nuremberg Principles: The Contemporary Challenges Conference sponsored by The Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America.
Personal life and death[]
Ferencz married his teenage sweetheart Gertrude Fried, in New York in 1946. They were married for more than 70 years, "without a quarrel", until her death in 2019. They had four children.
Ferencz died at an assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, Florida, USA, on 7 April 2023, at the age of 103 years, 27 days. He was the last surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
Gallery[]
References[]
- Benjamin B. Ferencz | Official Website (benferencz.org)
- Parting Words: Nine Lessons for a Remarkable Life by Benjamin Ferencz review — what you know when you’re 100 The Times, 26 December 2020 (Subscription required)
- Benjamin Ferencz on Twitter: "On his 102nd birthday, 11 March 2022
- Ben Ferencz's 103rd birthday Benjamin Ferencz on Twitter, 11 March 2023
- Benjamin B. Ferencz, Last Surviving Nuremberg Prosecutor, Dies at 103 The New York Times, 8 April 2023 (Archived)