Become a Member
Features

The man who prosecuted the Nazis at Nuremberg

Ahead of the 75th anniversary of the trials, Benjamin Ferencz, 100, tells the JC about how he collected and deployed evidence of the greatest crimes known to humanity

November 5, 2020 11:26
Benjamin Ferencz

ByJenni Frazer, BY jenni frazer

3 min read

It seems grimly appropriate that the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials — the moment Nazi evil met some form of comeuppance — is a Jew.

And yet the age of 100, Benjamin Ferencz does not display the rage of a man who witnessed the horror of the death camps — but instead reveals his satisfaction that he was able to help bring some of the Shoah’s perpetrators to justice.

Despite being Jewish, it was “not difficult” at all to hear the evidence given in the trial, he says, because he had “comprehensive documentary proof of the incredible slaughter of about one million Jewish men, women, and children — which I also witnessed as a member of the liberating forces at several concentration camps”.

The trials (there were 12 in all) opened on November 20 1945, and have become a byword for the application of fair and balanced judgment to war crimes, and also for new categories of crime — crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression and the crime of genocide.