'In quest for justice': Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor of Nazis, dies at 103

Benjamin Ferencz, a Romanian-born American lawyer, and the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, passed away Friday in Florida at the age of 103. He is best known for his trials of Nazis for genocidal war crimes.

Former Nazi officials were indicted and convicted as war criminals in the Nuremberg trials by International Military Tribunal in Nurnberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1946. Ferencz was one of the first non-Nazi witnesses to describe the horrors of Nazi labour and concentration camps.

Ferencz was born on 11 March 1920, in Transylvania, Hungary (now Romania).

The news of his passing away was confirmed by St. John's University law professor John Barrett. Barrett runs a blog on the Nuremberg trials. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington also confirmed the death.

"Today the world lost a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide and related crimes," the museum tweeted.

Ferencz emigratedfrom Transylvania to New York with his parents when he was a little child to escape the region's pervasive anti-Semitism.

He received his law degree from Harvard.

During World War II, Ferencz served in the US Army and was later assigned to the War Crimes Branch of the US Army in Germany, where he was tasked with gathering evidence and prosecuting Nazi war criminals.

In 1947, he became the chief prosecutor for the United States in the Einsatzgruppen Case, a series of trials in which 22 Nazi officers were tried for their roles in the mass murder of over one million Jews and other minorities in Eastern Europe.

Ferencz, in an account of his life, wrote that he discovered bodies "piled up like cordwood" and "helpless skeletons with diarrhoea, 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" at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp and Ohrdruf labour camp in Germany.

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"The Buchenwald concentration camp was a charnel house of indescribable horrors," Ferencz wrote. "There is no doubt that I was indelibly traumatised by my experiences as a war crimes investigator of Nazi extermination centres. I still try not to talk or think about the details."

After the trials, Ferencz continued his legal career, working as a lawyer and advocate for international justice.

He played a key role in the establishment of the International Criminal Court and has been a vocal advocate for the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ferencz is also the author of several books, including "Lessons of Nuremberg: A Message for Today's World" and "An International Criminal Court: A Step Toward World Peace." He had received numerous honours and awards for his work.

(With inputs from agencies)

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