Ferencz secured convictions of numerous German officers who led roving death squads during the war
\n Florida
\nBenjamin Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials in Germany that brought Nazi war criminals to justice after World War Two and a longtime apostle of international criminal law, died on Friday at age 103, NBC News reported, citing his son.
\nFerencz, a Harvard-educated lawyer, secured convictions of numerous German officers who led roving death squads during the war. Circumstances of his death were not immediately disclosed. The New York Times reported that Ferencz died at an assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, Florida.
\nHe was just 27 years old when he served as a prosecutor in 1947 at Nuremberg, where Nazi defendants including Hermann G\u00f6ring faced a series of trials for crimes against humanity including the genocide known as the Holocaust in which six million Jewish people and millions of others were systematically killed.
\nFerencz then advocated for decades for the creation of an international criminal court, a goal realized with the establishment of an international tribunal that sits in The Hague, Netherlands. Ferencz also was a significant donor to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum established in Washington.
\n\u201cToday the world lost a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide and related crimes. We mourn the death of Ben Ferencz\u2014the last Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor. At age 27, with no prior trial experience, he secured guilty verdicts against 22 Nazis,\u201d the U.S. Holocaust Museum said in a post on Twitter.
\nAt Nuremberg, Ferencz became chief prosecutor for the United States in the trial of 22 officers who led mobile paramilitary killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen that were part of the notorious Nazi SS. The squads carried out mass killings targeting Jews, gypsies and others – primarily civilians – during the war in German-occupied Europe and were responsible for more than a million deaths.
\n\u201cIt is with sorrow and with hope that we here disclose the deliberate slaughter of more than a million innocent and defenseless men, women, and children,\u201d Ferencz said in his opening statement at the trial.
\n\u201cThis was the tragic fulfillment of a program of intolerance and arrogance. Vengeance is not our goal, nor do we seek merely a just retribution. We ask this court to affirm by international penal action man\u2019s right to live in peace and dignity regardless of his race or creed. The case we present is a plea of humanity to law,\u201d Ferencz added.
\nFerencz told the court that the accused officers methodically carried out long-range plans to exterminate ethnic, national, political and religious groups \u201ccondemned in the Nazi mind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ferencz secured convictions of numerous German officers who led roving death squads during the war Florida Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials in Germany that brought Nazi war criminals to justice after World War Two and a longtime apostle of international criminal law, died on Friday at age 103, NBC News […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324906,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-324876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n