Benjamin Ferencz: The young US prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials

Benjamin Ferencz, a Hungarian-Jewish New Yorker and Harvard Law School graduate, served as the youngest US prosecutor during the Nuremberg war crimes trials. At age 27, Ferencz worked to bring members of the Einsatzgruppen—mobile Nazi death squads—to justice.

His commitment to prosecuting these crimes was deeply influenced by his experiences as a US Army soldier and war crimes investigator following the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. Ferencz described the harrowing scenes at Buchenwald, where he encountered emaciated prisoners and mass casualties, as experiences that remained vividly etched in his mind.

During the legal proceedings, Ferencz and a team of investigators analyzed Nazi archives to gather evidence against various sectors of the regime, including SS members, doctors, lawyers, and industrialists. A critical breakthrough in the case came from the discovery of the Einsatzgruppen's own daily reports, which meticulously documented the systematic murder of Jews and other targeted groups across occupied territories, particularly in Poland and the Soviet Union.