Benjamin Ferencz
The son of Jewish parents, Benjamin B. Ferencz was born in 1920 in the Carpathian Mountains and grew up in abject poverty in New York. He managed to make it to Harvard on a scholarship where he studied law. As a recruit he took part in the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Today the 98-year-old lives with his wife Gertrude in New York State.
As a young US soldier and lawyer, Ferencz came to Germany right after the liberation of the concentration camps to collect evidence for the atrocities committed there, an experience that he can hardly talk about even today. Ferencz uncovered detailed files of the so-called Einsatzgruppen (Action Groups) and became the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials against the murderous SS. After the trials he wanted to do something for the victims of the Holocaust and so for many years he was decisively involved in the development of the German Restitution Laws.
Since then Benjamin Ferencz has dedicated himself to the idea and establishment of an International Criminal Court (ICC). War crimes have to be prosecuted and the existence of a worldwide court can prevent excesses – this is the issue that Ferencz has been propagating worldwide for decades. Today he is fighting for the inclusion of wars of aggression as a charge at the ICC. Statements by Fatou Bensouda, the current chief prosecutor at the ICC, and other important human rights lawyers describe Ferencz as the personification of continuity from Nuremberg to The Hague.
In 2010 Benjamin Ferencz was awarded the Grand Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany at the Foreign Office for his lifelong efforts for international law.