Members of the audience hold up photographs of people who died in the Holocaust during the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s National Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
Congress on Tuesday posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the highest honors bestowed on civilians, to U.S. Army veteran Benjamin Ferencz for his work in investigating and prosecuting Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg trials.
The medal was presented to the family of Ferencz, who was the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor when he died in 2023 at age 103, during the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance commemoration at the U.S. Capitol.
“Mr. Ferencz was a tremendous force for good, a fierce New Yorker with a heart of gold and a backbone of steel, a man who saw the worst of humanity and spent the better part of a century fighting for the best of it,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., one of the lawmakers who lobbied for the award.
Congress voted to bestow on Ferencz the medal in 2022, citing his role as chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen case, which convicted 22 Nazis for unleashing mobile killing squads behind the Eastern Front, as well as his lifelong advocacy for international criminal justice and the rule of law.
A ceremony celebrating the approval of the award took place in Florida, where Ferencz lived, several months before he died.
On Tuesday, his family members were formally given the medal as members of Congress recounted Ferencz’s life and accomplishments.
Keri Levine Ferencz, third from right, daughter of Benjamin Ferencz, stands with Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C.; Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La.; and House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., during the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s National Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
The Congressional Gold Medal presented posthumously in honor of Benjamin Ferencz, who served in the U.S. Army during World War II and investigated and prosecuted Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
The 3rd US Infantry Regiment, traditionally known as “The Old Guard,” enter Emancipation Hall before the ceremony on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, in Washington. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
Ferencz was born in a Transylvanian village in Romania in 1920 and immigrated to the U.S. with his family as an infant to escape anti-Jewish pogroms. He enlisted in the Army in 1943 after graduating from Harvard Law School, joining an anti-aircraft artillery battalion readying for D-Day.
After landing in Normandy in 1944, he fought across France and Germany, receiving five battle stars. In the last stages of World War II, he was tasked with investigating newly liberated concentration camps to gather evidence of war crimes.
“One of his first experiences was at Buchenwald. He recalled in vivid detail the hungry reduced to scavenging for scraps and the countless bodies that lay like firewood, piled at the foot of furnaces that scattered that campus,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. “In records that Nazis meticulously kept, he uncovered the horrific scale of the crimes.”
By the time Ferencz finished, he had found evidence of more than 1 million deaths.
He left military service at the end of 1945, at the rank of infantry sergeant, and was soon recruited by the U.S. government to bring war criminals to justice through a series of trials held by Allied forces in Nuremberg, the city where Hitler had held massive Nazi rallies.
After the Nuremberg trials ended, Ferencz fought for reparations for survivors of the Holocaust and other victims of Nazi Germany and lobbied for the development of mechanisms to punish wars of aggression. His efforts contributed to the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002.
“Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task,” Ferencz said, according to his website. “And I also learned that if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law, the same cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible might one day destroy the entire human race.”
Holocaust survivor Eileen Weiss shows a photograph of family members before they were exterminated at a concentration camp during the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s National Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
