Benjamin B. Ferencz: former prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trial.

• Position: Testimonial

As the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, we dedicate this issue to honor the accomplishments of a man who has truly dedicated his life to the cause of human rights and world peace, Benjamin B. Ferencz. Benjamin B. Ferencz was a principal prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials as a young man and is an ardent proponent of the International Criminal Court. He is an inspiration to all of us to further the goal that crimes against humanity should not go unpunished.

Benjamin B. Ferencz was born in 1920 in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. Before he was a year old his family immigrated to America where he was raised in Manhattan. He joined an anti-aircraft artillery battalion preparing for the invasion of France after he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1943. As the Nazi atrocities were uncovered, he was transferred to a newly created War Crimes Branch of the Army to gather evidence of Nazi brutality and apprehend criminals. After his honorable discharge on the day after Christmas in 1945, he returned to New York to practice law, but was soon recruited for the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

At the age of twenty-seven, in his very first case as an attorney, Ferencz became the Chief Prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg war crimes trial, which was referred to as the "biggest murder trial in history." Twenty-two defendants were charged with murdering over one million people. The United States had decided to prosecute a broad cross-section of Nazi criminals, after the conclusion of the trial against Hermann Goering and his henchmen. Overwhelming evidence indicated German doctors, lawyers, judges, generals, industrialists and others had played leading roles in perpetrating Nazi brutalities.

All of the defendants were convicted and thirteen were sentenced to death. Ferencz's primary objective had been to establish a legal precedent that would encourage a more humane and secure world in the future. He is quoted as saying:

Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task. And I also learned that if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law, the same cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible might one day destroy the entire human race. While watching the world sink deeper in the quagmire of Vietnam in the 1970s, Ferencz began to withdraw from the private practice of...