Seventy-six years ago, at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg – once the site of annual torchlit Nazi rallies – Ben Ferencz, a punchy 27-year-old whose short build was all but concealed behind the tall wooden podium, opened the biggest murder trial in history.
It was his first ever trial, but all 22 members of the Einsatzgruppen he was prosecuting – Nazi extermination squads responsible for the murder of a million Jews and other minorities – were duly convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Ferencz, last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials, died on Friday in Florida at the age of 103. Present at the liberation of Nazi concentration camps as a US soldier, Ferencz went on to play a key role in the establishment of the International criminal court (ICC) in the 1990s.
He was hailed as an “icon in international criminal justice” by Fatou Bensouda, former chief prosecutor of the ICC, after decades of international legal work and campaigning for peace and justice.
“Vengeance is not our goal, nor do we seek merely a just retribution,” he said in his opening statement at Nuremberg in 1947. “The case we present is a plea of humanity to law.”
I first encountered Ferencz when I interviewed him for the Guardian, and was immediately struck by how upbeat and witty he was. We went on to write a book together, Parting Words – the result of dozens of conversations over many months – about his life and the lessons he wanted to leave for young people.
Despite an ocean and seven decades between us, we turned out to have a lot in common – bridging backgrounds, nations and identities was something Ferencz was a great believer in.
We were both refugees who emigrated at a young age and grew up in tough neighbourhoods. We both taught ourselves English through friendships and subtitled movies. We were the first in our immediate family to go to university, where we studied law. We even had the same birthday – though each time I reminded him of that he warned me: “Don’t go doing anything bad and ruining my birthday, kid.”
Ferencz witnessed more in his lifetime than most, and talking to him was like thumbing through the pages of a great American novel. He was born into a Jewish family in Transylvania in 1920 and moved to New York as an infant. He won a scholarship to Harvard, joined the US army and fought his way from the beaches of Normandy through the Battle of the Bulge and the German Maginot and Siegfried defence lines.
After he transferred to General Patton’s headquarters in 1944, Ferencz was given the job of setting up a new war crimes branch.
He was present at, or arrived soon after, the liberation of concentration camps including Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg and Ebensee, scouring the barbarous scenes for evidence of Nazi crimes to present at trial. He dug up bodies from shallow graves, sometimes with his bare hands, and witnessed scenes of unadulterated horror that haunted him for the rest of his life.
He later led efforts to return confiscated property to Holocaust survivors, and took part in reparations negotiations between Israel and West Germany.
As the US intensified its war in Vietnam in the 1960s, Ferencz withdrew from private legal practice and devoted himself to campaigning for peace, always returning to his favourite slogan of “law not war”. He wrote several books setting out the case for an international legal body, which would later come to fruition in the establishment of the ICC.
For his work he received many awards, including the Medal of Freedom from Harvard, and donated millions of dollars to the US Holocaust Memorial museum’s genocide prevention centre.
“I don’t care about glory, I don’t care about money,” he told me. “I came into the world as a pauper, I lived most of my early life in poverty, and now I’m giving it all back.”
Ferencz was keen to leave behind multiple lessons for young people, including the importance of following dreams, cherishing love and speaking your truth even when no one’s listening.
“It’s only by understanding another person’s way of thinking that you’ll be able to reason with them and change their mind”, he told me. “The powerful will always be afraid of anyone trying to curb their power”; “everything is impossible until it’s done”.
Above all, Ferencz remained a person of unbounded optimism and belief in the goodness of people, despite everything he had witnessed. No matter where we’re from or what we do, he insisted aged 100, we have more in common with one another than we know, and united we are stronger.
Progress, Ferencz would say, is not immediate, but slow-moving and complex. Miracles can still be performed. Weren’t changes such as the end of colonialism and slavery, the rights of women and even landing on the moon inconceivable a few decades ago?
When I originally tried to convince Ferencz to write Parting Words, he was adamant he didn’t have the time. “You don’t know how busy I am, my dear,” he told me. “I’m so busy I don’t have time to die.”
While he’s finally found his time to rest, Ferencz’s legacy will endure – including the three pieces of advice he was always quick to dish out to anyone who would listen. “One: never give up. Two: never give up. Three? Never give up.”
