Translate This News In

The last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials in Germany that brought Nazi war criminals to justice after World War Two and a longtime supporter of international criminal law, Benjamin Ferencz, passed away on Friday at the age of 103, according to NBC News, citing his son.

The German officials who oversaw roving murder squads throughout the war were all convicted by Ferencz, a Harvard-educated attorney. His death’s circumstances weren’t made public right away. Ferencz passed away in a Florida assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, according to the New York Times.

He was only 27 years old when he served as a prosecutor in Nuremberg in 1947, where Nazi defendants, including Hermann Göring, were tried for crimes against humanity, including the Holocaust, a mass killing of six million Jews and millions of others.

READ:   Climate activists protest the Science Museum's fossil fuel cooperation at night

Ferencz afterwards promoted the construction of an international tribunal that is based in The Hague, Netherlands, for many years. This goal was achieved as a result of his decades-long advocacy. Additionally, Ferencz made a sizable donation to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which was created in Washington.

 

The fight for justice for those who were victims of genocide and related crimes has lost one of its leaders today. As the final Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor, Ben Ferencz’s passing is mourned. He obtained guilty judgements against 22 Nazis at the age of 27, despite having no prior trial experience, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum stated in a tweet.

READ:   The first colored images from the James Webb Telescope will be released on July 12

At Nuremberg, Ferencz was appointed chief prosecutor for the United States in the case of 22 commanders who oversaw the Einsatzgruppen, a group of mobile paramilitary assassination squads that belonged to the legendary Nazi SS. Over a million people were killed by the squads throughout the war in German-occupied Europe as they carried out mass executions of Jews, gypsies, and other people, mostly civilians.

In his opening address during the trial, Ferencz remarked, “We here unveil the purposeful massacre of more than a million innocent and defenceless men, women, and children with sadness and with hope.

“This was the terrible result of an intolerant and conceited programme. Both vengeance and just retribution are not what we aim for. The right of every man to live in peace and dignity, regardless of race or religion, is something we ask this court to uphold through international criminal law. Our argument is an appeal for justice on behalf of humanity, Ferencz continued.

READ:   Imran Khan claims that Pakistan's "experiment of regime change" has failed

The convicted officers meticulously followed out long-term plans to annihilate ethnic, national, political, and religious groups that were “condemned in the Nazi mind,” according to Ferencz, who testified in court.

The eradication of entire human groups—known as genocide—was a key component of Nazi theory, according to Ferencz.

Each defendant was found guilty, and 13 of them received death sentences. This was Ferencz’s first case of the day.

Ferencz, who was born in Transylvania, Romania, on March 11, 1920, moved to the United States with his family when he was just 10 months old. He grew up in the slums of ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ in New York City. After earning his law degree from Harvard in 1943, he enlisted in the American military and served in Europe before joining the newly established war crimes unit of the American Army.

READ:   According to the White House, the United States is not in a hurry to recognise the Taliban authority in Afghanistan

Following their liberation by allied forces, he took records and made notes in Nazi concentration camps like Buchenwald, surveying scenes of human suffering like stacks of malnourished corpses and the crematoria where untold thousands of victims were burned.

In Nuremberg, where the Nazi leadership had organised elaborate propaganda rallies prior to the war, Ferencz was enlisted to serve under U.S. General Telford Taylor in the U.S. prosecution at the war crimes tribunals after the war ended in 1945. Even though the trials were divisive at the time, they have now been praised as a significant step towards creating international law and putting war criminals on trial in fair proceedings.

READ:   The UN chief of peacekeeping will visit India

The most important thing about it, according to Ferencz, was that it “gave us and it gave me an insight into the mentality of mass murderers,” he stated in an interview with the American Bar Association in 2018.

“They had murdered over a million people in cold blood, including hundreds of thousands of children, and I wanted to know how educated people – many of them had PhDs or were generals in the German Army – could not only tolerate but also lead and carry out such heinous acts.”

Ferencz campaigned to ensure that Holocaust victims and survivors received compensation following the Nuremberg tribunals. Later, Ferencz supported setting up an international criminal court. A statute establishing the International Criminal Court was adopted by 120 nations in Rome in 1998; it went into effect in 2002.

READ:   Despite the new Prime Minister, Sri Lankan protesters vow to continue their anti-government campaign

At the age of 91, he participated in the court’s first case by making a closing argument in the prosecution of the accused Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, who was found guilty of war crimes.

Ferencz has criticised his own country’s acts over the years, especially those made during the Vietnam War. In January 2020, he published an opinion piece in the New York Times in which he criticised the United States for carrying out a “immoral action” and “a clear violation of national and international law” by assassinating a top Iranian military official using a drone.

He said in 2018 to the bar association, “I have continued to devote most of my life to preventing war because I know the next war will make the last one look like child’s play.” “Law, not war” is still my motto and my best hope.

READ:   Flowers Sales Soar Before Queen's Funeral: "Just To Say Thank You"