Nuremberg now: the legacy of Ben Ferencz

Print photocopies of Benjamin Ferencz, while he served as a prosecutor during the Nuremberg trials, on a table at his home in Delray Beach, Florida on June 1, 2022.
Print photocopies of Benjamin Ferencz, while he served as a prosecutor during the Nuremberg trials, on a table at his home in Delray Beach, Florida on June 1, 2022.
USA Today Network via Reuters Connect

At 27 years old, with no trial experience to speak of, Ben Ferencz entered the courtroom at Nuremberg in November of 1945. He was tasked with holding to account a regime that had slaughtered millions and tried to annihilate his own people. Acting as chief prosecutor, Ferencz secured convictions against 22 Nazis.

Ferencz, the last-surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, passed away last week at the age of 103. As a child, he and his family fled anti-semitism in Romania. After finishing law school at Harvard, he joined the US army, taking part in the Normandy landings and the Battle of the Bulge. He was then assigned to General Patton’s HQ as part of a special unit investigating Nazi atrocities, interviewing survivors and witnessing first-hand the horrors of the concentration camps. That experience would shape the rest of his life. He would remain a warrior, not on the battlefield but in the public arena as a professor of international law and tireless campaigner for justice for the victims of genocide.

The Nuremberg trials marked a watershed moment in the history of modern human rights law. Never before had an international tribunal sought to hold global leaders to account for starting a war and carrying out crimes against humanity. They also included a new term- genocide – as part of the indictments.

In the decades since, the notion that war criminals may face justice has – however imperfect in practice – become an accepted part of international norms. That’s especially true since 2002 when Ferencz’s efforts helped to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague. International courts have judged the perpetrators of genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in ways that were unimaginable when Ferencz was a child.

Still, more than 75 years after Nuremberg, international justice remains a work in progress. Participation in the ICC is voluntary, and even the world’s most powerful democracy, the United States, refuses to do so, out of concerns that it would limit American sovereignty. That puts Washington – which has faced its own human rights allegations in the past – in the unsavory company of serial abusers like Russia, China, Syria, or Saudi Arabia, which also refuse to ratify the ICC’s underlying statutes.

Despite a recent ICC warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, there’s little chance that he’ll face prosecution. Bashar al-Assad, for his part, has survived the civil war he helped create, and is unlikely to face justice for the gruesome crimes that his regime committed during the war.

The coming years pose particular challenges to the cause of international justice. For one thing, the emergence of new major international powers may make it even harder to secure universally-applicable mechanisms of human rights law. Technological advances, meanwhile, enable state and non-state actors to spread disinformation in an attempt to erode trust in facts and evidence. For instance, the Russian disinformation narratives have asserted that the civilian massacre in Bucha, Ukraine was staged.

Nevertheless, Ben Ferencz and his colleagues gave today's international human rights lawyers and activists the tools to document evidence and gather witness testimony, and the mechanisms to hold leaders accountable.

Ferencz himself was under no illusions about the challenges of creating a system that would bring war criminals to justice. In his later years he remarked “Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task.”

But he also reminded us that “if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law, the same cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible might one day destroy the entire human race.”

More from GZERO Media

After voters elected her to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, liberal candidate Judge Susan Crawford celebrates with Wisconsin Supreme Court Judge Ann Walsh Bradley at her election night headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, on April 1, 2025.

REUTERS/Vincent Alban

Republicans expanded their lean House majority after a pair of special elections in Florida, but a conservative candidate lost badly in a Wisconsin judicial race — despite a huge cash injection from Elon Musk.

- YouTube

If China, Japan, and South Korea formed a united front, what kind of leverage would they have in negotiating against US tariffs? I think they are heading in that trajectory. The question is, will it be enough to keep Syria stable and away from descending into civil war? Why does Trump want to take Greenland? Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.

President Donald Trump, seen here on the South Lawn of the White House in February, is set to unveil his "Liberation Day" tariffs.

REUTERS/Craig Hudson

T-Day has arrived. On Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs on US trade partners will take effect immediately after a Rose Garden announcement.

A giant screen in Beijing shows news footage about the People's Liberation Army (PLA) joint army, navy, air and rocket forces drills around Taiwan on April 1, 2025.
REUTERS/Florence Lo

Beijing conducted one of the largest and most provocative military drills ever around the island -- but why now?

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a briefing, Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 28, 2025.
Ukrinform/ABACA via Reuters Connect

Vladimir Putin insists that Volodymyr Zelensky is no longer Ukraine’s legitimate president because his government has imposed martial law and delayed elections that were due in 2024.

President Donald Trump speaks from the Oval Office flanked by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the day he signed executive orders for reciprocal tariffs, Feb. 13, 2025.
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Details of a group chat between senior administration officials that leaked last week – the so-called Houthi PC small group – provide allies, adversaries, and watchers with revealing insights into the administration’s foreign policy blueprint. Lindsay Newman explores the takeaways.

Proud Source became a Walmart supplier in 2021. Today, its team has grown by 50%, and it's the largest employer in Mackay, ID. Walmart supports small businesses across the country, and nearly two-thirds of Walmart's product spend is on products made, grown, or assembled in America. It’s all a part of Walmart’s $350 billion investment in US manufacturing, which helps small businesses grow and supports US jobs. Learn more about Walmart’s commitment to US manufacturing.