Ben Ferencz was one of the first people to document the Nazis' crimes and to account for them.

DLNews NÜRNBERG TRIALS:

He was one of the first people to see the Nazis' crimes - and thanks to his fearless work, many of them were held accountable.

Benjamin Ferencz as a soldier in the U.S. Army (bottom right)

On Friday evening, Benjamin Fercz, the last prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials, died just a few weeks after his 103rd birthday. The Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. (USA) confirmed his death. "Today, the world has lost a leader in the search for justice for the victims of Lower Murders," wrote the museum in a message.

Ben Fercz was born in Transylvania in 1920 (previously belonged to Hungary, today to Romania). But because of the widespread hatred of Jews, his family had to flee to the United States just ten months after his birth.

When the Second World War breaks out, Ferencz is currently studying law at the elite university Harvard. The immigrant son goes to the army and, in 1945, receives the order that will change his life: it is intended to collect evidence of the war crimes of the Germans.

At just 27 years old, Benjamin Fercz becomes chief bank lid at the Nuremberg processes.

"As far as I know, I was the first in the American army to deal with war crimes," wrote Benjamin Ferencz in his memories. The lawyer travels through the bombed Germany, sees the mountains of corpses in the Buchenwald concentration camp, and searches thousands of pages of Nazis in which they report on their murders of Jews, Roma, prisoners of war, women, and children.

"I added the number of those murdered on a small arithmetic machine. When I reached a million, I stopped counting, "writes Ferencz.

In 1947 he became a chief prosecutor in the operational group process at just 27 years. Benjamin Ferencz faces the 24 high-ranking S.S. officers in Nuremberg, about whose crimes he had read for weeks. Instead of relying on eyewitnesses, he referred to the official Nazis documents.

In the application group process, 24 S.S. officers have to answer for the murder of more than one million people.

The strategy works: All accused are convicted, 14 even to death - although Ferencz had not wanted their execution.

“I did not demand the death penalty because I didn't think it was appropriate to weigh the lives of 24 mass murderers against those killed by them. There was no way to find a fair balance, ”he said five years ago in an interview with reporters.

Nevertheless, he was satisfied with the judgment: "Our oath to protect humanity through the rule of law was kept," writes Ferencz in his memoir.

In the years after the Nuremberg trials, the lawyer not only campaigned for the compensation of the victims of the Holocaust, but he also dreamed of a court where war criminals from all over the world could be made.

Benjamin Fercz at a memorial event for the veterans of the Second World War in 2015

After decades of commitment, this dream came true in 2002 with establishment of the International Criminal Court in the Hague (Netherlands). In January 2009, he was invited to keep the first plea in the court's first trial. In conversation with reporters, the lawyer explained his goal in life five years ago: "I tried to make the right for everyone, in peace and dignity, regardless of their breed and their faith, to make the law."

Benjamin Fercz leaves a son and three daughters.