- Person
- Benjamin Ferencz
- Lived
- 1920–2023
- Field
- International law
- From
- American
The story
After the Nuremberg trials Benjamin Ferencz spent about ten years in Germany helping to set up restitution and compensation programs for victims of Nazi persecution. In 1956 he returned to the United States with his wife Gertrude and their four children and became a law partner of Telford Taylor, his former chief at Nuremberg. In private practice he continued to pursue claims, including those of Jewish forced labourers against the Flick industrial concern.
His experiences after the Second World War never left him. After 13 years in practice, and influenced by the events of the Vietnam War, he gave up the law firm to work full time for peace through law. His goal was an International Criminal Court that would act as a world court of final resort for crimes against humanity and war crimes, and laws that would treat aggressive war itself as a crime.
He set out his case in a series of books. His first, Defining International Aggression: The Search for World Peace, published in 1975, argued for the creation of such a court. It was followed by An International Criminal Court: A Step Toward World Peace (1980), Enforcing International Law: A Way to World Peace (1983) and others. His 1979 book Less Than Slaves, about Jewish forced labour and the fight for compensation, won a National Jewish Book Award. Altogether he wrote nine books and dozens of articles, gave countless speeches and travelled the world into his 90s spreading his motto, law not war.
The idea he championed slowly gained ground. In July 1998 a conference in Rome adopted the Rome Statute by 120 votes to seven, and the International Criminal Court came into being on July 1, 2002, when the statute entered into force. Ferencz argued that law must apply equally to everyone and urged the United States to join without reservations. In 2018, after a long negotiation, the court's power to prosecute the crime of aggression was finally activated.
Ferencz's decision to give up a comfortable legal career shows how deeply he believed in the cause. Today the court he helped to imagine has 125 member states and is the first permanent international tribunal with power to try individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression.
Why it matters
Ferencz's decades of advocacy helped keep the idea of a permanent international criminal court alive until it became a reality.
About Benjamin Ferencz
At 27, in his first case, chief prosecutor of the Einsatzgruppen trial at Nuremberg; he spent the rest of his 103 years campaigning for an International Criminal Court.
More about Benjamin Ferencz
- Ben Ferencz spoke at the ICC's first trialIn 2011, aged 91, Ben Ferencz delivered a closing statement in the International Criminal Court's trial of Thomas Lubanga, and hailed his 2012 conviction as a milestone.
- Ben Ferencz called his case a plea of humanity to lawOpening his Nuremberg case in 1947, Ben Ferencz said vengeance was not the goal: the case was a plea of humanity to law, a theme that guided the rest of his life.
- Ben Ferencz rushed into liberated camps to save evidenceIn 1945 Ben Ferencz joined the US Army's new war crimes branch and entered camps such as Buchenwald and Mauthausen, sometimes within hours of liberation, to secure Nazi records.
- Ben Ferencz taught international law at Pace UniversityFrom 1985 to 1996 Ben Ferencz was an adjunct professor of international law at Pace University in White Plains, New York, passing on the lessons of Nuremberg.
- Ben Ferencz, 27, won the "biggest murder trial in history"At 27, in his first case, Ben Ferencz was chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial, then spent decades campaigning for an International Criminal Court.
- Ben Ferencz gave his savings to prevent genocideBen Ferencz donated $1 million to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's genocide prevention work and pledged to leave his life savings to genocide prevention initiatives.
- Ben Ferencz stayed in Germany to win restitution for victimsAfter Nuremberg, Ben Ferencz spent a decade in Germany setting up programs to return looted property and compensate victims of Nazi persecution, and helped shape the 1953 restitution law.
Sources
- Benjamin B. Ferencz Wikipedia
- Ben Ferencz, former Nuremberg trials prosecutor, dies at 103 NBC News
- International Criminal Court Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.