Benjamin (Ben) Ferencz was born to a Jewish family in March 1920 in the region of Transylvania. Shortly after his birth, his hometown became part of Romania. When he was 10 months old, Ben’s family emigrated to the United States to escape antisemitism. They settled in New York City and Ben grew up in Manhattan.

Ben graduated from Harvard Law School in 1943, and soon thereafter, he enlisted in the United States Army, serving in an anti-aircraft artillery battalion. Ben served under General George S. Patton throughout World War II, and toward the end of the war, he was invited to investigate Nazi war crimes for the War Crimes Branch of the US Army. In his role as war crimes investigator, Ben gathered evidence about the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, and visited concentration camps liberated by Allied forces. His mission was to gather evidence that could be used in postwar military tribunals. Memories of the horrifying scenes that he witnessed left a permanent impression on Ben and informed his desire to see a world in which those responsible for atrocity crimes are held accountable.

At the end of 1945, Ben was honorably discharged from the US Army and he returned to New York where he prepared to practice law. Soon after, he married his childhood sweetheart, Gertrude Fried. The US government soon recruited Ben to join the team working on the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, a groundbreaking court established to try top-ranking Nazi officials for crimes perpetrated during World War II. The US government asked Ben to remain in Germany during the 12 subsequent Nuremberg trials, which American General Telford Taylor oversaw. Ben was sent to Berlin to oversee a team of some 50 researchers examining official Nazi records, which provided overwhelming evidence to implicate German doctors, lawyers, judges, military officials, industrialists, and others. Ben’s wife Gertrude also worked on the war crimes team, first in a Berlin document center processing evidence used in the trials and later as an administrative assistant in Nuremberg.

In Berlin, Ben gathered sufficient evidence to prosecute German officials in connection with the so-called “roving task forces” or Einsatzgruppen that operated as mobile killing units to murder Jews, Roma, communists, and disabled patients in the German-occupied Soviet Union. Often referred to as an “Aktion,” a mobile killing squad massacre typically began when Jews and other victims were rounded up or forced to report to a central destination. The victims were then forcibly marched or transported to the killing site. If a mass grave had not already been dug, the victims were forced to dig one. They were stripped of their clothing and valuables, and driven in groups to the pit. The mobile killing squad and their local helpers either shot the victims at the edge so that they fell in, or forced them into the grave to be shot. Friends and families often had to watch their loved ones die before them. One third of all Jewish Holocaust victims died in these shooting massacres.

At the age of only 27, Ben was appointed Chief Prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen Trial, in what the Associated Press called “the biggest murder trial in history.” The Court found 20 Nazi officials guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in a criminal organization. It was Ben’s first criminal case.

After the trial, for decades Ben fought legal battles for compensation for victims and survivors of the Holocaust, the return of stolen assets, and other forms of restitution for those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

Ben died in 2023, at the age of 103. He was a passionate campaigner for the creation of the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the Netherlands. A bench there is inscribed with his motto “Law, Not War.” Ben and Gertrude had four children, all born in West Germany while Ben worked with General Taylor and on reparations claims for Nazi victims.