{"id":233564,"date":"2023-04-17T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2023-04-17T11:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=233564"},"modified":"2024-06-12T21:24:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T20:24:00","slug":"benjamin-ferencz-champion-of-world-law-leaves-a-strong-heritage-on-which-to-build","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/04\/benjamin-ferencz-champion-of-world-law-leaves-a-strong-heritage-on-which-to-build\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin Ferencz, Champion of World Law, Leaves a Strong Heritage on Which to Build"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Benjamin Ferencz Chief Prosecutor Nuremberg<\/p><\/div>\n

14 Apr 2023 – <\/em>Benjamin Ferencz, champion of World Law and World Citizen, died on 7 April 2023 at the age of 103, leaving a strong heritage of action for world law.\u00a0 He was particularly active in the creation of the International Criminal Court located in the Hague.<\/p>\n

He was born in March 1920 in what is now Romania, close to the frontiers of Hungary and Ukraine.\u00a0 In the troubled period after the end of the First World War, the parents of Ferencz who were Jewish decided to emigrate to New York with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.\u00a0 They settled in New York City, and Ferencz changed his Yiddish name Berrel to Benjamin and studied in the New York school system. He did his undergraduate work at City College and then received a scholarship to Harvard Law School, a leading U.S. law school.<\/p>\n

At the end of his law studies at Harvard, he was taken into the U.S. Army and in 1944, he was in Europe with the Army legal section, the Judge-Advocate General Corps.\u00a0 By conviction and interest, he began to collect information on the Nazi concentration camps.\u00a0 He was able to find photos, letters, and other material that he later was able to use as one of the prosecution team in the Nuremberg trials of Germans accused of war crimes.\u00a0 He was also a staff member of the Joint Restitution Successor Organization concerned with the restoration or compensation of goods having belonged to Jewish families.\u00a0 Thus, he developed close cooperation with the then recently created state of Israel.<\/p>\n

From his experiences with the German trials and the many difficulties that the trials posed to be more than the justice of the victors and also the need not to antagonize the recently created Federal Republic of Germany, Ferencz became a strong advocate of an international legal system such as the Tribunals on Ex-Yugoslavia of 1993 and that of Rwanda (1994).\u00a0 Much of his effort was directed to the creation of the International Criminal Court, a creation that owes much to efforts of non-governmental organizations, such as the Association of World Citizens.\u00a0 It was during this effort for the creation of the International Criminal Court that we came into contact.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Ferencz leaves a heritage on which we can build.\u00a0 The development of world law is often slow and meets opposition.\u00a0 However, the need is great, and strong efforts at both national and international levels continue.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong><\/p>\n

(1) See Benjamin B. Ferenez. A Common Sense Guide to World Peace (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1985)<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Ren\u00e9 Wadlow is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a><\/em>. He <\/em>is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues, and editor of <\/em>Transnational Perspectives.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 Apr 2023 – World Citizen Benjamin Ferencz died on 7 Apr 2023 at the age of 103, leaving a strong heritage of action for world law on which we can build.\u00a0 He was particularly active in the creation of the International Criminal Court in the Hague.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":84446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3038,2395,651,1875,124],"class_list":["post-233564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-benjamim-ferencz","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-justice","tag-nuremberg-trials-wwii","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233564"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233569,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233564\/revisions\/233569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}