The Last Prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials: "The Germans Were Confident of Their Victory"

Ben Ferencz, an American Jewish lawyer, is the last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg Trials. He is 96 years old, yet his memory remains impeccable. A Washington Post reporter, who interviewed him a few days ago, notes: "His memory is astonishing, effortlessly recalling dates and names from more than half a century ago... He is a small man, barely five feet tall, but a legal giant."

Ferencz was born in Transylvania, a region now part of Romania. He spent his early months in a small hut in a tiny village. However, when he was ten months old, his family immigrated to the United States. As he grew, he studied law at the prestigious Harvard Law School: "I had to excel at something to compensate for being so small," he jokes.

In 1943, Ferencz completed his studies and enlisted in the US Army, serving mainly in the Third Army under George Patton, participating in the Normandy invasion, the liberation of France, and the conquest of Germany. In 1945, he was transferred to the Third Army headquarters and became part of a team tasked with gathering testimonies and investigating Nazi war crimes. In this role, he was sent to concentration camps that were being liberated by the American army.

In December 1945, Ferencz was discharged from the army with the rank of sergeant and returned to New York. However, a few weeks later, Brigadier General Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, decided to recruit Ferencz again to join the prosecution team.

"Taylor, who later became my boss in civilian life, told me my military file indicated I often disobeyed orders. I told him it wasn't often but usually—I refuse to follow stupid or illegal orders," recalls Ferencz.

His primary role in Nuremberg was as the lead prosecutor against the Einsatzgruppen commanders. The Einsatzgruppen were Nazi death squads moving from area to area in Europe, responsible for the murder of over a million people, mostly Jews. Ferencz convinced the other prosecutors that these squad leaders should be tried. They agreed—on the condition that he would be the chief prosecutor in the case. Ben Ferencz was only 27 then, and it was his first trial.

He introduced precisely one witness, whose testimony was more than enough: a Nazi bureaucrat who issued documents efficiently documenting the murder of Jews and other unwanted people. "The Germans were so sure they were going to win," Ferencz explains. "And they were excellent at documentation."

From the prosecutor's podium in court, he described the Einsatzgruppen commanders as people for whom "death was a tool, and life was a toy... If these people are granted immunity, the law loses its meaning, and humans will live in fear." Two days later, the judges convicted all 22 defendants. Four of them were executed. The tension leading to the verdict was so intense that when the verdict was announced, Ferencz experienced the worst headache of his life.

Despite his successful prosecution, Ferencz left the Nuremberg Trials with only partial satisfaction. He knew that only a small sample of Nazi criminals stood trial, while the rest continued their lives as usual. "We didn't even have room to judge them all," he says.

After the war, Ferencz dedicated himself to legal claims for compensation for thousands of survivors. He also participated in negotiations that led to the reparations agreement signed in 1952 between West Germany and Israel and in the enactment of the German Restitution Law (1953), which dealt with the restitution of lost property and compensation for it. In 1970, influenced by the horrors he witnessed and against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, he left the law firm he was a partner in and began focusing on international law and establishing an international war crimes tribunal. This court was ultimately established in 2002, and in the first trial it held—against Congolese war criminal Thomas Lubanga Dyilo—Ferencz delivered the prosecution's closing arguments. He is frustrated that terrorists like Bin Laden are killed instead of being tried in criminal courts, which he believes could create greater deterrence.

His memories of the horrors he witnessed accompany him daily. As a sergeant in General Patton's Third Army, Ferencz witnessed the liberation of several concentration camps: Buchenwald. Mauthausen. Flossenbürg. Ebensee.

"It was the same story in every camp," he says. "Prisoners enslaved to death. Terrible, indescribable, unforgettable conditions. Guards fleeing." For seven decades, he has shared the stories of the horrors he saw. "In one camp, I saw prisoners beating a captured Nazi guard and then burning him alive, slowly," he says. "I can still see that scene before my eyes. Could I have stopped them? No. Did I try? No. Should I have tried? No. Try to put yourself there."

Ben Ferencz is well aware of his advanced age but has no intention of stopping his fight for the issues important to him. "My hope is that people won't settle for just looking at the past and saying 'Never again,' then doing nothing," he says. "That's why I'm taking steps to really prevent this from happening again." These days he is donating a million dollars to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's international justice initiative. He hopes to renew this donation annually for ten years, so the total donation will reach up to 10 million dollars. "I am determined to give everything I have back in gratitude for the opportunity I had in the United States. All my life I have tried to create a more peaceful and humane world, and I want the money to go to that goal."

Where's the money from? The reporter who visited his Florida home attests that the former prosecutor and his wife live in a spartan apartment, furnished very simply. "I saved most of the money I earned in my life, and I invested it well," Ferencz says plainly. "Now I want to give it away. I came into the world as a poor boy, and that's how I want to leave it."