HRLC Book Launch: Nuremberg's Citizen Prosecutor: Benjamin Ferencz and the Birth of International Justice (Virginia Press 2025)

The Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) is delighted to invite you to the launch of the upcoming book Nuremberg’s Citizen Prosecutor: Benjamin Ferencz and the Birth of International Justice, written by Professor Gregory S. Gordon. This event will take place from 12:00 - 13:00 UK time (GMT) in the University of Nottingham's Monica Partridge Building (Room C14) on Friday, 7 November 2025.

Benjamin Ferencz led a remarkable life as a warrior for justice. In 1947, the 27-year-old—a dirt-poor immigrant who had graduated from Harvard Law and served as General Patton’s lead war crimes investigator—became a chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. There, he took on what the Associated Press called the "biggest murder trial in history," prosecuting Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen killing squads. He later pioneered Holocaust reparations, led the charge to criminalize aggressive war, and became a driving force behind the International Criminal Court (ICC), helping craft its founding charter and, as the last living Nuremberg prosecutor, participating in the ICC’s first trial. In this first major English language biography of a Nuremberg chief prosecutor, Gregory Gordon, a former war crimes prosecutor himself and the first scholar with full access to Ferencz’s personal papers, has uncovered incredible new “missing link” details, which, combined, reveal a golden thread running through Ferencz’s career and better contextualize his landmark achievements.