Thomas Buergenthal

American lawyer Thomas Buergenthal specialised in human rights law and was a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Born in Ľubochňa, Czechoslovakia, now Slovakia, Buergenthal was one of the youngest known holocaust victims to survive the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen. He was 11-years-old when the Polish Army liberated him from Sachsenhausen, where he was then sent to a Polish orphanage. Purely by chance Buergenthal was reunited with his mother, who later sent him to America in 1951 to have a better life.

Once in the United States Buergenthal studied law at the New York University Law School and the Harvard Law School. An expert and pioneer in international human rights law, he worked with the US Holocaust Museum and the International Court of Justice in Den Haag. Amongst his many roles Buergenthal was a member of the Ethics Commission of the International Olympic Committee, for which he was later awarded with the Olympic Order in Silver. His autobiography A Lucky Child was published in 2007 and tells Buergenthal’s story of his time and escape from the concentration camps.