Ben Ferencz, last living Nuremberg prosecutor of Nazis, dies

Benjamin Ferencz, chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg war crimes trials, speaks during an opening ceremony for the exhibition commemorating the trials in Nuremberg, Germany in 2010. Pic/AP

Ben Ferencz, the last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, who tried Nazis for genocidal war crimes and was among the first outside witnesses to document the atrocities of Nazi labour and concentration camps, has died. He had turned 103 in March.

Ferencz died Friday evening in Boynton Beach, Florida. Born in Transylvania in 1920, Ferencz immigrated with his parents to New York to escape rampant antisemitism. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Ferencz joined the U.S. Army and took part in the Normandy invasion during World War II. He then became an investigator of Nazi war crimes against US soldiers.

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When U.S. intelligence reports described soldiers encountering large groups of starving people in Nazi camps, Ferencz followed up with visits, first at the Ohrdruf labour camp and then at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp. He found bodies "piled up like cordwood" and "helpless skeletons with diarrhea, dysentery, typhus, TB, pneumonia, and other ailments, retching in their louse ridden bunks or on the ground with only their pathetic eyes pleading for help," Ferencz wrote in an account of his life. "The Buchenwald concentration camp was a charnel house of indescribable horrors," Ferencz wrote.

"There is no doubt that I was indelibly traumatized by my experiences as a war crimes investigator of Nazi extermination centers. I still try not to talk or think about the details." At the age of 27, Ferencz became chief prosecutor for a 1947 case in which 22 former commanders were charged with murdering over 1 million Jews, Romani and other enemies of the Third Reich.

All defendants were convicted, and over a dozen were sentenced to death. Later Ferencz championed the creation of an international court which could prosecute any government's leaders for war crimes. This was realized in 2002 with establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, though its effectiveness has been limited by failure of countries like the US to participate.

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