21 Facts About Benjamin Ferencz

Benjamin Berell Ferencz was born on March 11,1920 and is an American lawyer.

Benjamin Ferencz 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 US authorities at Nuremberg, Germany.

When Benjamin 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.

Benjamin 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.

On Christmas 1945, Benjamin Ferencz was honorably discharged from the Army with the rank of sergeant.

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Benjamin Ferencz returned to New York, but was recruited only a few weeks later to participate as a prosecutor in the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials in the legal team of Telford Taylor.

Benjamin Ferencz stayed in Germany after the Nuremberg Trials, together with his wife Gertrude, whom he had married in New York on March 31,1946.

In 1956, the family—they had four children by then—returned to the US, where Benjamin Ferencz entered private law practice as a partner of Telford Taylor.

From 1985 to 1996, Benjamin Ferencz worked as an adjunct professor of international law at Pace University at White Plains, New York.

Benjamin Ferencz has repeatedly argued against this procedure and suggested that the US join the ICC without reservations, as it was a long-established rule of law that "law must apply equally to everyone", in an international context.

Benjamin Ferencz suggested that Bush should be tried in the International Criminal Court for '269 war crime charges' related to the Iraq War.

Benjamin 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".

In 2009, Benjamin 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 March 16,2012, in another letter to the editor of The New York Times, Benjamin Ferencz hailed the International Criminal Court's conviction of Thomas Lubanga as "a milestone in the evolution of international criminal law".

In 2018, Benjamin Ferencz was the subject of a documentary on his life, Prosecuting Evil, by director Barry Avrich, which was made available on Netflix.

On June 20,2019, artist and sculptor Yaacov Heller honored Benjamin Ferencz—presenting him with a bust he created—commemorating his extraordinary life dedicated to genocide prevention.

On January 16,2020, The New York Times printed Benjamin 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".

In March 2022, an audio clip of Ben Benjamin 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.

Benjamin Ferencz says that Vladimir Putin should be 'behind bars' for his war crimes, and is "heartbroken" over atrocities in Ukraine.

Benjamin Ferencz married his teenage sweetheart Gertrude Fried, in New York in 1946.

Benjamin Ferencz is the last surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.