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The last surviving prosecutor from the post-World War Two Nuremberg trials has died aged 103.

Ben Ferencz was just 27 when he secured the convictions of Nazi officers for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He later advocated for the establishment of an international court to prosecute war crimes, a goal realised in 2002.

Ferencz died peacefully in his sleep on Friday evening at an assisted living facility in Boynton Beach, Florida.

Confirming his death, the US Holocaust Museum said the world had lost "a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide".

Speaking to Newshour's Lyse Doucet, his son Donald Ferencz, who also works in international law, says he will remember his father as someone who dedicated his life to "trying to make it a more humane world under the rule of law".

He described his father as a "funny" and "mischievous" person, but one who worked "every day of his life". "This is not a guy who went fishing or played golf. This is a guy whose life mission was to try to make it a better world."

(Photo shows: Ben Ferencz in 2014, a Chief Prosecutor for the United States Army during the Nuremberg Trials. Credit: Getty Images)

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