[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 63 (Monday, April 17, 2023)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E320]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                APPRECIATING PROSECUTOR BENJAMIN FERENCZ

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JOE WILSON

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, April 17, 2023

  Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, today I am grateful to 
honor the life of Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz and offer my sympathy to 
his family. I along with Congresswoman Lois Frankel, co-led H.R. 6015, 
the Benjamin Berell Ferencz Congressional Gold Medal Act, which 
provided for the award of a Congressional Gold Medal to Mr. Ferencz in 
recognition of his service to the United States and the international 
community during the post-World War II Nuremberg trails and his 
lifelong advocacy for international criminal justice and the rule of 
law. The bill unanimously passed the House on May 10, 2022, and was 
signed into law in December. I am grateful for Mr. Ferencz's 
outstanding service and dedication to achieving international justice. 
I include in the Record the following obituary for Prosecutor Benjamin 
Ferencz:

       In 2011, at the age of 92, the diminutive but indomitable 
     Benjamin Ferencz rose to deliver the closing prosecution 
     speech at the first trial ever heard before the international 
     criminal court (ICC) in The Hague. Wearing black robes and a 
     starched white neck band, the veteran lawyer, who had 
     prosecuted Nazi mass murderers at the Nuremberg war crimes 
     trials more than 60 years earlier, saluted a ``historic 
     moment in the evolution of international criminal law''.
       Granting Ferencz, who has died aged 103, the honour of 
     appearing on the prosecution team--in the trial of a 
     Congolese warlord--acknowledged the extraordinary role he had 
     played in advancing the cause of international justice. The 
     last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor, he had dedicated his 
     life to campaigning, successfully, for the establishment of a 
     permanent court--the ICC--to try the world's most serious 
     crimes and for laws establishing the crime of aggression. 
     Guided by his motto, ``Law, Not War'', Ferencz was still 
     giving television interviews last year--arguing that those 
     responsible for atrocities in Ukraine must be brought to 
     trial.
       His reputation rested on two criminal trials he conducted 
     at the age of 27 before US military courts sitting at 
     Nuremberg in 1947 after the second world war. At the time, he 
     had no previous experience leading courtroom prosecutions.
       His first case was against SS officers who organized the 
     Einsatzgruppen mobile death squads operating in Nazi-occupied 
     eastern Europe. An estimated two million people were shot or 
     beaten to death and their bodies dumped in pits; the majority 
     of the victims were Jewish.
       The documentary evidence Ferencz assembled was so 
     persuasive that he did not need to rely on witnesses. Opening 
     his argument, Ferencz declared: ``Vengeance is not our goal . 
     . . we ask this court to affirm by international penal action 
     man's right to live in peace and dignity.'' It was later 
     dubbed the biggest murder trial in history.
       Twenty-two of the 24 Einsatzgruppen defendants were found 
     guilty of crimes against humanity. Fourteen were sentenced to 
     death and four eventually hanged. Ferencz had not requested 
     the death penalty.
       His second Nuremberg trial, in which he appeared as special 
     counsel, involved the Krupp armaments group, whose directors 
     were accused of crimes against humanity and exploitation of 
     100,000 slave labourers. Eleven directors were found guilty 
     and served prison terms of between three and 12 years.
       Ferencz was born in a Transylvanian village, Somcuta Mare, 
     which was then in Hungary and later became part of Romania. 
     Shortly afterwards his parents, Sarah (nee Schwartz) and 
     Joseph Ferencz, fled with their two children to the US to 
     escape antisemitism.
       Benjamin was raised in the Hell's Kitchen district of New 
     York, an area then renowned for poverty and crime. He won a 
     scholarship to Harvard law school, where he researched war 
     crimes. In 1943, he enlisted as a soldier and fought his way 
     from the Normandy beaches to the Battle of the Bulge. His 
     legal experience resulted in his being called into General 
     George Patton's headquarters, where he was reassigned as a 
     war crimes investigator. In Buchenwald and other 
     concentration camps, he saw piles of corpses and emaciated 
     survivors. His first target, he later recalled, was to seize 
     the death records and correspondence that provided the 
     evidence used at Nuremberg. He was discharged after the war 
     and returned to New York to practice law and marry Gertrude 
     Fried. In 1946, however, he was recruited to join the 
     American war crimes unit at the Nuremberg trials.
       The couple spent the next decade in Germany, where four 
     children were born and Ferencz worked alongside General 
     Telford Taylor, lead prosecutor at the U.S. military 
     tribunals. When the trials finished in 1949, Ferencz 
     coordinated reparations claims for Jewish survivors' groups.
       In 1956, he returned to New York and opened a law firm with 
     Taylor, but later turned his attention to campaigning for a 
     permanent international criminal court. He wrote legal and 
     popular books, the last of which, Make It Count, an 
     autobiography, was published earlier this year. One of 
     Ferencz 's greatest regrets was that the US consistently 
     refused to ratify the ICC agreement and, in his words, 
     repeatedly ``tried to kill the idea''.
       International recognition of Ferencz's contribution came 
     towards the end of his life. In his 90s, a path alongside the 
     international court of justice in The Hague was named after 
     him and a bench set up with the motto Law, Not War.
       Ferencz identified the problem that international criminal 
     law is a patchwork where offenders who commit atrocities 
     often escape justice because many states have still not 
     ratified international court statutes. His response was 
     ``Never give up!''
       ``He was inspiring precisely because in the face of all the 
     horror, he somehow managed to be optimistic,'' Philippe 
     Sands, professor of international law at University College, 
     London, said.
       Sir Geoffrey Nice, a war crimes prosecutor at the 
     international criminal court for the former Yugoslavia, who 
     also cooperated with Ferencz, paid tribute to the way in 
     which he ``turned the traumas he experienced . . . into an 
     enduring determination to learn and teach from them''.
       Gertrude died in 2019. He is survived by his son, Don, who 
     continued his father's work developing international 
     jurisdiction for the crime of aggression, three daughters, 
     Nina, Robin and Keri, and three grandchildren.
       Benjamin Berell Ferencz, war crimes prosecutor, born 11 
     March 1920; died 7 April 2023.

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