Ben Ferencz, the last prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, has died

Benjamin Berell Ferencz, better known as

and who tried Nazi leaders for crimes against humanity and genocide, died in Florida at the age of 103, the Museum confirmed this Sunday. of the United States Holocaust.

"Today the world lost

for the victims of genocide and related crimes. We mourn the death of Ben Ferencz, the last Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor," the museum wrote on its social media.

The memorial museum, created to "inspire citizens and leaders around the world to confront hate, prevent genocide and promote human dignity," noted that Ferencz, at 27 and with no prior trial

.

Ferencz died Friday in Boynton Beach, a Florida coastal city located in Palm Beach County.

Born on March 11, 1920 in Transylvania, Romania, Ferencz came to the United States at the hands of his parents 10 months after he was born.

"He grew up in the Hell Kitchen neighborhood of New York. He knew poverty, rampant crime, and suffering. He quickly became a public school student, college graduate, Harvard Law School graduate, and infantryman of the US Army of World War II," Professor John Q. Barrett, from St. John's University, who was his student, recalled on his blog.

After Ferencz

, he joined an anti-aircraft artillery battalion preparing for the invasion of France.

As a soldier he fought in the main campaigns in Europe

.

When Nazi atrocities were discovered, he was transferred to a newly created Army War Crimes Branch to collect evidence of Nazi brutality and apprehend criminals, details the website benferencz.org.

In his book "PlanetHood: The Key to Your Future" (1988), written to promote a comprehensive system of international law and courts, Ferencz describes the scenes he witnessed as he liberated "these centers of death and destruction":

"

. Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly sight I can never forget: crematoriums ablaze with the fires of burned flesh, mounds of emaciated corpses piled up like firewood waiting to be burned... I had glimpsed hell," he said.

Beginning in the spring of 1946, Ferencz served as a prosecutor in Nuremberg

, in the American occupation zone of what had been Nazi Germany.

His participation in the Nuremberg trial was his first case as a lawyer.

Photo: Twitter.

Between 1947 and 1948, Barrett details,

, about the prosecution of members of Nazi Germany's roving execution squads.

"

. He accused the leaders of the Nazi extermination operations in Eastern Europe, of crimes against humanity (...), war crimes and belonging to Nazi criminal organizations," recalled his student.

More than twenty Einsatzgruppen defendants were convicted of killing almost a million people

.

"The Einsatzgruppen case was and is the largest murder trial in human history," Barrett said.

"Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task. And I also learned that

," Ferencz has said of his interest in establishing an international court to try any government for war crimes.

Generally discreet in the media, in one of his last public appearances, in an interview given to CBS in May, he considered that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "a war criminal" and that Russia should be judged by international justice for his "aggression" against Ukraine.