Ferencz, Benjamin Berell “Ben”, born 11-03-1920, in Şomcuta Mare, Oraș Şomcuta Mare, Maramureș, 
Romania, in the historical Transylvania region, into a Jewish family to Joseph Ference (1894–1969) 
and his wife Sarah, born Legman Schwartz (1896–1980).
Benjamin had one sister and two half brothers, Gertrude Fried Ferencz (1918-2010, age 92) 
David Louis Ferencz (1928-2021, age 93) 
and Edward Ference (1929-2005, age 75/76) 
.A few months later the Treaty of Trianon allocated greater Transylvania, including Nagysomkút, to Romania from the Kingdom of Hungary. The new name of the town was Șomcuta Mare.
When Ferencz was ten months old, his family emigrated to the United States to avoid the persecution of Hungarian Jews by the Kingdom of Romania after Romania took control of Transylvania, Banat, Crisana, and Maramures. The family settled in New York City, where they lived on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. Ferencz studied crime prevention at the City College of New York, 
and his criminal law exam result won him a scholarship to Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he studied under Roscoe Pound 
and also did research for Sheldon Glueck, who at that time was writing a book on war crimes. Ferencz graduated from Harvard in 1943.
After his studies, he joined the US Army. 
His time as a soldier in the army began with a job as a typist in Camp Davis in North Carolina; at that time, he did not know how to use a typewriter or fire a weapon. His job duties also included cleaning toilets and scrubbing pots and floors. In 1944, he served in the 115th AAA Gun Battalion, an anti-aircraft artillery unit. He fought in several major battles of the European theatre and was awarded five battle stars. 
In 1945, he was transferred to the headquarters of General George Smith Patton‘s
Third Army, 
where he was assigned to a team tasked with setting up a war crimes branch and collecting evidence for such crimes. In that role, he was sent to the concentration camps the US Army had liberated.
On Christmas 1945, Ferencz was honorably discharged from the Army with the rank of sergeant. He returned to New York, but was recruited only a few weeks later to participate as a prosecutor (with the simulated rank of Colonel) on the legal team of American lawyer and professor. Chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. Telford Taylor 
in the subsequent Nuremberg trials. Near the Tempelhof 
in a building belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin, in the spring of 1946, Ferencz found reports that described in detail, day by day, the Einsatzgruppen’s killing of at least one million people from June 1941. Ferencz then flew to Nuremberg and demanded that the men be put on trial. Taylor hesitated, since there was a shortage of people and money. However, after Ferencz offered to personally handle the case, he agreed to have a trial held. Taylor appointed him chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen case—Ferencz’s first case. 
Of the 24 men he indicted, all were convicted; 13 of them received death sentences, of which four were eventually carried out. Apart from East Germany, they were the last executions performed on German soil, and in the Federal Republic.
In a 2005 interview for The Washington Post, he revealed some of his activities during his period in Germany by way of showing how different military legal norms were at the time:
Someone who was not there could never really grasp how unreal the situation was … I once saw DPs [displaced persons] beat an SS man and then strap him to the steel gurney of a crematorium. They slid him in the oven, turned on the heat and took him back out. Beat him again, and put him back in until he was burnt alive. I did nothing to stop it. I suppose I could have brandished my weapon or shot in the air, but I was not inclined to do so. Does that make me an accomplice to murder? You know how I got witness statements? I’d go into a village where, say, an American pilot had parachuted and been beaten to death and line everyone one up against the wall. Then I’d say, “Anyone who lies will be shot on the spot.” It never occurred to me that statements taken under duress would be invalid.
Ferencz stayed in Germany after the Nuremberg trials, together with his wife Gertrude, born Fried, (1919-2019, 
age 99) and whom he married in New York om March 31-1946. They had four children 
Together with Kurt May and others, he participated in the setup of reparation and rehabilitation programs for the victims of Nazi persecution, and also had a part in the negotiations that led to the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany signed on 10-09-1952, and the first German Restitution Law in 1953. In 1956, the family—they had four children by then—returned to the US, where Ferencz entered private law practice[16] as a partner of Telford Taylor.[18] While pursuing claims of Jewish forced laborers against the Flick concern (the subject of the Friedrich Karl Flick trial) 
, Ferencz observed the “interesting phenomenon of history and psychology that very frequently the criminal comes to see himself as the victim”.
Experiences just after World War II left a defining impression on Ferencz. After 13 years, and under the influence of the events of the Vietnam War, he left the private law practice and worked for the institution of an International Criminal Court that would serve as a worldwide highest instance for issues of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
In 2009, Ferencz was awarded the Erasmus Prize, together with Antonio Cassese; the award is given to individuals or institutions that have made notable contributions to European culture, society, or social science.
Death and burial ground of Ferencz, Benjamin Berell “Ben”.
Ben Ferencz died at an assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, Florida, on 07-04- 2023, at the age of 103. He was the last surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. Benjamin is buried at the Mount Moriah Cemetery, Fairview, Bergen County, New Jersey, United States, PerceelCONG. AHAVATH EMETH, Section A.
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