Book & Author: Nuremberg’s Citizen Prosecutor — Benjamin Ferencz and the Birth of International Justice
He was twenty-seven years old. He had never tried a case. And he was about to prosecute the biggest murder trial in history.
In this landmark biography, former war crimes prosecutor Gregory S. Gordon draws on unprecedented access to Benjamin Ferencz’s personal papers to tell the full story of a man who spent his life proving that law could stop war.
In 1947, Ferencz stood before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal to face down twenty-two commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, the SS killing squads responsible for more than 1.5 million deaths. A dirt-poor immigrant who escaped antisemitic persecution in Eastern Europe and grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, Ferencz had won a scholarship to Harvard Law, served as General Patton’s lead war crimes investigator, and walked through the liberated camps. What he witnessed there would define the rest of his life.
Ferencz went on to pioneer Holocaust reparations, help negotiate the landmark treaty between West Germany and Israel, and become the driving force behind the International Criminal Court. Decades later, as the last living Nuremberg prosecutor, he joined the ICC’s first trial, a warrior for justice to the end.
A live Q&A and book signing will follow.
Free to the public.
Registration required.
Community Partner: The Decalogue Society of Lawyers; The Center for National Security and Human Rights Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law
