Congress on Tuesday posthumously awarded American prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest U.S. honor bestowed on civilians, for his work taking on Nazi death squads during the Nuremberg Trials.

The award comes as the country reflects on a century of standing up to tyranny and as leaders emphasize the need for unwavering resolve against those who threaten freedom.

Ferencz, who died in 2023 at the age of 103, was just 27 with no previous trial experience when he became chief prosecutor in one of the most significant murder trials in history.

His record shows a lifetime of dedication to justice, a quality that resonates with many who see sharp contrasts between tyranny and the rule of law. During the ceremony, remarks underscored a career spent turning the worst chapters of history into a stubborn commitment to accountability.

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While Congress voted to bestow the medal to Ferencz in 2022, his family members were on hand to posthumously receive the honor this week during the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance commemoration at the U.S. Capitol. The moment was framed not only as a tribute to one man’s work but as a reminder of the enduring strength of American legal tradition when confronted by evil.

“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., during the ceremony.

The praise highlighted not just Ferencz’s intellect but his stubborn moral clarity in the face of inhumanity. The quote captures the contrast between a lifetime devoted to law and the brutal acts that demanded his response.

“He came face-to-face with evil, recalling the fact that he had quote, peered ‘into hell,’” Gillibrand continued.

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“A lesser person might have looked away. But Ben Ferencz looked harder.” The strong language and vivid imagery served to remind listeners that Ferencz confronted raw horror and chose to document it with precision and resolve.

Image Credit: US Army photographer on behalf of the OCCWC/IMT

Born in Transylvania in 1920, Ferencz, who was the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, emigrated with his family to the United States when he was an infant to escape anti-Jewish pogroms. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1943, Ferencz enlisted in the U.S. Army and was given the task of anti-aircraft artillery gunner.

In their typical [Army] brilliance, being a Harvard Law School graduate and an expert on war crimes, they assigned me to clean the latrines in the artillery and do every other filthy thing they could give me, Ferencz reminisced about the Army’s odd job placement in a 2016 interview with The Washington Post.

The remark reveals a humility born from a moment of unlikely service that shaped a man who would later lead charges against the perpetrators of mass murder.

In the Army, Ferencz rose to the rank of sergeant as a member of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army. Action during the Normandy invasion followed, as did breaking through the Maginot and Siegfried lines, crossing the Rhine and bitter fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.

After Ferencz’s honorable discharge in 1945, Gen. Telford Taylor, then the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, recruited Ferencz to return to Germany and work with a team of investigators tasked with uncovering the horrors of the Nazi regime. The work was dangerous, meticulous, and essential for assembling a legal record that could withstand the moral and historical test of time.

Tasked with gathering credible evidence of Nazi war crimes for the Army’s War Crimes Branch, Ferencz encountered the depths of human depravity. The Germans maintained meticulous death registries at the camps of Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg and Ebensee. These registries, which Ferencz was ordered to collect, contained the names of millions of victims.

“When I passed the figure of one million, I stopped adding,” he recalled in an interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “That was quite enough for me.”

Image Credit: US Army photographers on behalf of the OCCWC

It was there that Ferencz and his colleagues discovered the dossiers of the Nazi mobile death squads, the Einsatzgruppen — roving extermination squads that targeted Jews, Roma, homosexuals and political dissidents in Eastern Europe.

In the subsequent trial, the International Military Tribunal determined that nearly two million Jews were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen.

“Death was their tool and life their toy,” Ferencz told the judge during the opening statement of United States of America v. Otto Ohlendorf et. al.

“If these men be immune, then law has lost its meaning, and man must live in fear.” These lines, spoken in a courtroom that helped redefine modern justice, stand as a stark reminder that accountability protects civilization from chaos.

The posthumous recognition of Ferencz comes at a moment when leaders like President Trump emphasize the importance of strong national institutions and steadfast action against those who threaten democratic values. It underscores a faith in moral clarity and a commitment to the rule of law that mirrors the era when Ferencz helped write the playbook for prosecuting atrocity.

At the same time, it aligns with the approach advocated by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who has argued for a resolute defense of American interests and a commitment to global leadership. In Ferencz’s legacy, there is a clear through line to today’s calls for courage, accountability, and the unwavering defense of freedom.

As the medal ceremony closed, the narrative of a man who turned the darkest chapters of history into a plea for justice stayed with the crowd.

It is a reminder that law, when wielded with purpose and courage, can confront darkness and emerge with a promise that such chapters will not repeat themselves.

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