The topic of the guilty and the World War II victims has been discussed for decades. In fact the tragedy is that it is very complicated to draw a line between these two categories.
Ukraine, as well as other countries, has a complex and still painful trace of that war. However, the measure of Ukrainians’ patriotism is not only in seeing our own pluses and taking pride in the nation’s achievements, but also in sharply feeling our guilt.
We know and honor our heroes, but at the same time we acknowledge that there were, and still are, unfortunately, Ukrainians whose deeds are a disgrace to the nation. After becoming the president of independent Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk was the first to apologize in Babyn Yar on behalf of the Ukrainian people before the Jewish nation for the crimes committed on our land during World War II. This is significant. This is the nation’s willpower. At the same time, we should not permit the use of Ukrainians’ sensitive conscience to satisfy someone’s selfish interests.
Recently John (Ivan) Demjanjuk, accused by the German Prosecutor’s Office of executing 29,000 people in the Nazi concentration camp of Sobibor, was extradited from the US to Germany. There the 89-year-old Ukrainian will stand trial.
Demjanjuk was in the dock once, in the early 1990s. At that time, after 15 months of hearings, the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice brought in a verdict of not guilty. Today the German investigators have discovered new circumstances in this case. Many world mass media, including fairly authoritative ones, have proclaimed Demjanjuk guilty even before the trial. Contributors to The Day have a different opinion.
The permanent legal prosecution of Demjanjuk, a Ukraine-born citizen of the US, raises many questions from the standpoint of the fundamentals of law.
In the early 1990s Demjanjuk was accused of committing Nazi crimes, in particular allegedly serving as a guard in a Nazi camp and torturing prisoners, sending Jews to gas chambers, etc. According to the recollections of those prisoners who were lucky to survive, the man who tortured them had a nickname “Ivan the Terrible.” Someone came up with an idea that “Ivan the Terrible” is the same person as Ivan Demjanjuk.
Without unnecessary ceremony Demjanjuk was deported from the US to Israel, where he was tried by the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice (Bagatz). The Israeli court discharged Demjanjuk despite the great stir and psychological pressure present in mass media and society in general, which does honor to Israeli justice. After the verdict was delivered, one local “fighter against anti-Semitism” reportedly splashed sulfuric acid into the face of the Israeli lawyer who was instrumental in Demjanjuk’s acquittal.
The case seemed to be closed, and Israeli Themis said its weighty final word. However, recently the Federative Republic of Germany brought the same accusations against Demjanjuk that were refuted by the Israeli court. Germans assert that they have found a witness who accuses specifically Demjanjuk. It is, however, strange why this witness has remained silent for so many years, although the Israeli trial received wide coverage in the world. The witness should have said his word during the hearings at the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice.
This is not the only strange circumstance in this quite dubious case. Why was it the German court that came up with this initiative, having essentially reversed the verdict of the Israeli court? What evidence may be presented by Germany’s justice system? Will it be more convincing than the evidence recognized as inconclusive by Bagatz? Demjanjuk nearly fell victim to a court mistake once, when he was essentially mistaken for another person. Where is the guarantee that the same thing won’t happen this time?
All these prosecutions seem to have a tendency, which has nothing to do with justice and a desire to find out the truth. One wonders it the entire affair revolves around a desire to convict Demjanjuk at any cost, guilty or not, defying all the circumstances? If this desire is being demonstrated, the initiators of this campaign seem to have left only one option available to themselves: convict the accused. Who will bear the responsibility for many years of judicial mockery over the seriously ill old man if Demjanjuk will again be pronounced not guilty, as was the case in Israel? Will this improve the authority of Germany’s justice system?
Demjanjuk is 89. It is difficult for him not only to sit, but even to lie down. He was brought to an airport in a wheelchair to be sent across the world to stand trial in Germany. Demjanjuk’s lawyers say that handling their seriously ill client in this way is tantamount to tortures. And who will be responsible for this legal murder if the 89-old dies as a result?
Karl Marx once said that punishment should not be more disgusting than the crime. The way Demjanjuk is being treated is disgusting. Moreover, his guilt has not been proved yet. But everything that is going on at the moment raises great distrust in Germane’s justice system.
Demjanjuk’s trial is becoming all the more symbolical, like the Beilis trial, Alfred Dreyfus affair, or the Sholom Schwartzbard trial. In the early 20th century some forces in the Russian Empire needed, at any cost, the conviction of Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Jew, on charges of a ritual murder of a Christian child in Kyiv. Some French forces were very much eager to accuse and convict, at any cost, Dreyfus, also a Jew and an officer at the French General Headquarters, and shift on him the blame for France’s military failures. Someone in Europe badly needed, again at any cost, to acquit Schwartzbard, the murderer of Symon Petliura.
All these trials have greatly affected the conscience of the respective nations and their relations. Germanу’s trial of Demjanjuk may become another case in point. Was Demjanjuk the only one? This trial differs from the above-mentioned processes by the fact that Demjanjuk is not supported by any force, a national or a civic movement (like it happened in the case of Beilis, Dreyfus, and Scwartzbard). He is all alone in this battle, because the country, where he was a law-abiding citizen for many years, has disowned him, and there is hardly an organization concerned about his fate and maintaining justice in his case.
Thus, Demjanjuk may become an easy target for persons who are concerned with problems that have nothing to do with seeking the truth. Is this a case of someone in Germany wanting to show their “orthodox anti-Nazism,” demonstrate that they are more Catholic than the Pope, and are greater “fighters against anti-Semitism” than Israel at expense of the poor old man? But everything is not so simple with Germany and its denazification, as it appears at first glance.
Of course, since 1945 many Nazi criminals have been punished in Western Germany. These efforts of German Themis make an especially great impression against the background of a virtually complete refusal on the part of the states of the former USSR to punish Communist criminals. Incidentally, on April 2, 2009, the European Parliament approved a resolution to recognize Fascism and Communism equally criminal phenomena. Strangely, Ukrainian superfree democratic mass media nearly ignored this extremely important fact.
If we look closer at the denazification of Western Germany, we will see some very interesting characteristics that often escape the attention of historians and political analysts. The most radical denazification of Western Germany was carried out by the allies (the US, Great Britain, and France) in their occupation zones in the period between 1945 and 1951. During this time the greatest number Nazi criminals were sentenced to capital punishment. The difference between the allies was only in the way of execution: Americans and the Brits hanged the Nazis, whereas the French shot them.
Things changed dramatically after the case was turned over to German Themis. Death penalties immediately became pass . Many former Gruppenf hrers were either not punished at all or their punishment was purely symbolical. After taking part in the destruction of tens and hundreds of thousands of people, these Nazis were often amnestied after three or four years of imprisonment (people receive longer sentences for reckless killing!). They made administrative, political, or academic careers in the FRG. Especially touching is the fact that former SS Brigadenf hrers became professors at German universities, where they taught young Germans. Interestingly, what could they teach them?
I will provide here only a few examples of the “anti-Nazi heroic deeds” of Germany’s judicial system. Here is the biography of Kurt Becher (Sept. 12, 1909, Hamburg — after 1962, the FRG), from Entsyklopedia Tretiego Reikha (Encyclopedia of the Third Reich), Moscow, 2005. The entry on Becher reads: “Heinrich Himmler’s assistant, SS Standartenf hrer. Born to a grain and hop trader; a member of NSDAP (The National Socialist German Workers’ Party) and the SS since 1933; one of the closest collaborators of Adolf Eichmann. After the war he became owner of the biggest trade company in Bremen and a millionaire.”
This is an interesting story indeed. For some reason Germany’s justice system did not notice “Eichmann’s closest collaborator,” nor was he noticed (like many others) by the famous “Nazi hunter” Simon Wiesenthal, although Becher did not hide anywhere. There was no need in sending expeditions to Argentina, Bolivia, or the jungles of equatorial Africa, as Wiesenthal did. One had only to go through Hamburg, Baden-Baden, Munich, and Stuttgart.
Demjanjuk, an ordinary, generally unknown Ukrainian, appears to be a more terrible criminal than “Eichmann’s closest collaborator.”
Here is one more example: “Dr. Werner Best (July 10, 1903, Darmstadt — June 23, 1989, M lheim, Ruhr) — a Nazi statesman, lawyer, an SS leader, SS-Obergruppenf hrer (1944)… One of the founders of Sicherheitsdienst (SD, Security Service)… In 1939 he was sent to Poland and was responsible for repressions against Polish intelligentsia and participants of the Polish Resistance, as well as execution of war prisoners. In 1972 the government of the People’s Republic of Poland appealed to the leaders of Western Germany to extradite Best, as a person guilty of war crimes on Polish territory. The German side refused to comply, motivating its refusal by ‘Best’s poor state of health.’”
Germany’s justice system was concerned about SS-Obergruppenf hrer’s health, but it is not so much concerned about Demjanjuk’s state of health. Why? Incidentally, after the refusal to extradite him to Poland, the “diseased” SS member lived for another 17 years.
Clearly, Germany’s judicial system these criminals were compatriots, rather than foreigners or stateless persons like Demjanjuk. It is easer to show one’s adherence to principles and implacability to a stranger, at the same time distracting public attention from not-the-best pages in the history of Germany’s justice system in the period since 1945, when a great number of generals and officers of Das Schwarze Korps (SS Black Corps) escaped punishment or were handed very lenient sentences.
These are not rare cases — there are many more similar examples and, in fact, they constitute a certain system. According to this system, German mass killers were very often punished by German courts way too leniently for their crimes. Was the FRG reaching national reconciliation in such a way? Does the imperfect Germany’s justice system need Demjanjuk as a sin offering? Now this justice should either prove Demjanjuk’s guilt in an absolutely clear, irrefutable, and convincing way, or acquit him and give him possibility to live out his days calmly, as well as compensate all the moral and material losses to him and his family. This may somewhat improve the reputation of Germany’s justice system, which has raised too many questions.
COMMENTARY
This case smacks of the worst kind of political fighting
Yevhen SVERSTIUK, dissident, former political prisoner, publicist, and president of the Ukrainian Pen Club:
“I had some knowledge of Demjanjuk’s case when he was in Israel, and I belonged to those who signed an appeal to the Israel court saying that he was not guilty. The appeal was given due recognition; it boiled down to the statement that one cannot accuse a person of crimes she did not commit. For it was proved that the crimes committed by a man called the Terrible were imputed to Demjanjuk. I think that a well-reasoned moral appeal would not go amiss today, this time to the German court.
“This case smacks of the worst kind of political fighting. There is more speculation than morality here. This legal process won’t bring honor for its initiators. Clearly, this game has plenty of shadow sides and nothing in common with what the justice system should do.
“I am not sure whether Ukraine should take any position as a state in this case. But on the level of diplomatic relations it should hint that one ought to maintain elementary norms of decency and respect for human dignity.
“I’ve spent seven years in concentration camps and five years in exile. I’ve dealt with people of different ranks, frequently with very bad people. And I would not like any of them to be accused of anything they did to me personally and people who were with me. In spite of everything, honestly, I cannot single out any one of them to be convicted, even though there were many of those who abused their power.
“Demjanjuk’s case evokes more discontent and resentment than satisfaction over justice being done.”
