[3] Thomas Buergenthal was known as one of the youngest holocaust victims to survive places like Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen, which were concentration camps.

Buergenthal,[7] born to German-Jewish/Polish-Jewish parents who had moved from Germany to Czechoslovakia in 1933, grew up in the Jewish ghetto of Kielce (Poland) and later in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen.

Buergenthal served as a judge on the International Court of Justice at The Hague from 2 March 2000 to his resignation on 6 September 2010.

[8] Buergenthal served as a judge for many years, including lengthy periods on various specialized international bodies.

Between 1979 and 1991, he served as a judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, including a term as that court's president; from 1989 to 1994, he was a judge on the Inter-American Development Bank's Administrative Tribunal; in 1992 and 1993, he served on the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador; and from 1995 to 1999, he was a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

[11] While he stated that Israeli settlements were illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention and that the Palestinians had the right of self-determination, Judge Buergenthal felt that the court hadn’t looked into the question of self-defense adequately.

[12] Judge Buergenthal was a co-recipient of the 2008 Gruber Prize for Justice for his contributions to the promotion and protection of human rights in different parts of the world, and particularly in Latin America.