- Person
- Benjamin Ferencz
- Lived
- 1920–2023
- Field
- International law
- From
- American
The story
When the Nuremberg trials ended, Benjamin Ferencz did not go home. Only 27 when he had prosecuted the Einsatzgruppen case, he stayed in Germany with his wife Gertrude, whom he had married in New York in 1946. The crimes he had documented had robbed millions of people of their lives, homes, businesses and savings, and he believed the survivors deserved more than verdicts against their persecutors.
Ferencz was recruited to lead an effort to return property seized by the Nazis to its owners or their heirs. With Kurt May and others he helped set up reparation and rehabilitation programs for victims of Nazi persecution. It was difficult and at times dangerous work, carried out in a country still recovering from the war.
He was also called in to help negotiate the reparations agreement between Israel and West Germany, signed on September 10, 1952, and he had a part in the first German Restitution Law of 1953. Under these arrangements the German government agreed to compensate Holocaust victims around the world. Ferencz also pressed the Germans to agree to maintain cemeteries where Holocaust victims were buried. According to the Claims Conference, roughly $90 billion has since been distributed to Holocaust survivors.
Ferencz returned to the United States in 1956, by then with four children. In private practice he continued to pursue claims of Jewish forced labourers against the Flick industrial concern, whose leaders had been tried at Nuremberg. He observed how often perpetrators came to see themselves as victims. He later told the story of these struggles in his book Less Than Slaves: Jewish Forced Labor and the Quest for Compensation (1979), which won a National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category.
The restitution and compensation systems Ferencz helped build did not undo the crimes of the Holocaust, but they gave survivors practical help and a formal recognition of the wrongs done to them. They reflected Ferencz's lifelong view that justice must serve the living as well as remember the dead.
Why it matters
The restitution and compensation systems Ferencz helped build brought material help and a measure of recognition to Holocaust survivors around the world.
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 gave up his law practice to work for peaceAfter 13 years in private practice, and moved by the Vietnam War, Ben Ferencz quit to campaign full time for an international criminal court and laws against aggression.
- 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.
Sources
- Benjamin B. Ferencz Wikipedia
- Ben Ferencz, former Nuremberg trials prosecutor, dies at 103 NBC News
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.