Ben Ferencz

Benjamin B. Ferencz was an American lawyer and chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen trial at Nuremberg. He later advocated for international criminal justice and the prosecution of aggressive war.

Connect

Einsatzgruppen trial: A 1947–1948 Nuremberg proceeding in which former leaders of Nazi mobile killing units were tried for mass murder. Ferencz served as chief prosecutor in this trial, his defining courtroom role.
Robert H. Jackson: An American jurist who served as chief U.S. prosecutor in the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Jackson’s Nuremberg prosecution helped establish the legal setting in which Ferencz later worked.
Command responsibility: A form of liability holding military or civilian superiors responsible for crimes they knew or should have known subordinates committed. The prosecution examined how leaders organized, directed, and bore responsibility for mass killings.
Crime of aggression: The planning, preparation, initiation, or execution of a state’s use of armed force in violation of the United Nations Charter. Ferencz made criminalizing aggressive war a central goal of his postwar advocacy.
Holocaust: The systematic persecution and murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. Ferencz investigated Nazi crimes whose scale and evidence defined his postwar work.
Nuremberg trials: A series of postwar trials prosecuting major German officials and organizations for crimes committed under Nazi rule. The Einsatzgruppen case belonged to this wider program of postwar prosecutions.
Telford Taylor: An American lawyer who led the prosecution of the subsequent Nuremberg trials after the International Military Tribunal. Taylor appointed Ferencz to lead the prosecution in the Einsatzgruppen case.
Crimes against humanity: International crimes involving widespread or systematic attacks against civilian populations. The Einsatzgruppen charges addressed the organized murder of civilians on a vast scale.
Kellogg–Briand Pact: The 1928 treaty in which signatory states renounced war as an instrument of national policy. Its prohibition of war informed arguments that aggressive war could carry individual criminal responsibility.
United States Army: The land warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces. Ferencz served in the Army during World War II before joining the Nuremberg prosecution.