Demjanjuk trial: sometimes symbolism is important
Posted on Tuesday 1 December, 2009
Filed Under History
JOHN Demjanjuk – currently standing trial in Munich, accused of complicity in the murder of 27,900 Jews at Sobibor concentration camp in world war two – is 89 years old and apparently in failing health.
Let’s work on the basis that he really did do the wicked things of which he is accused; the prosecution is seemingly confident of its case, even almost 70 years after the killings took place. Is justice really served by putting Demjanjuk in the dock?
That’s the question Holocaust historian David Ceserani asks in the Independent this morning. Ceserani, himself Jewish and the author of a recent book on Eichmann, has previously advocated that perpetrators of Nazi genocide should be brought to book in all circumstances, irrespective of the passage of time. But in this instance, he takes the opposite stance.
Let us grant that if Demjanjuk is as ill as he looks, and not just play acting, than incarceration is out of the question. Banging up elderly and frail individuals – even elderly and frail former death camp guards – is clearly inhumane. The good society extends humanity even towards those who did not show it themselves. What we are still left with is the educative value of the judicial process.
The question of retribution for the horrors of the twentieth century is a live issue in many countries. They handle them in different ways.
The Nuremberg trials were externally imposed on Germany, and subsequent Entnazifizierung was always half-hearted if that. Ceserani rightly details the lenient sentences dealt out to war criminals in West Germany in the immediate post-war decades. His point that Demjanjuk is originally Ukrainian, and thus an ideal scapegoat, is well made.
France prosecuted Vichy collaborators in a series of trials that continued into the 1990s. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission guaranteed kid glove treatment to the architects of apartheid.
In eastern Europe, Stalinist bureaucrats routinely reinvented themselves as democratic politicians. Only in Germany and – to a lesser extent – Poland have many of them suffered real sanction.
Spain, by contrast, has consistently been determined to fudge Franquismo by trying to pretend it never happened. Indeed, a 1977 amnesty law passed during the transition to democracy was a clear indicator that these matters were then judged too sensitive for anybody to be brought to book.
Last year, prosecuting magistrate Baltasar Garzón threatened to bring posthumous charges against those behind the disappearance of 114,000 people over the 15 years following Franco’s rebellion against a democratically elected republican administration, right in the middle of the tensest decade in European history. Opposition from the political right led to the idea being dropped.
What purpose, then, can there be in resurrecting history? Well, firstly there is the argument that some increment of moral satisfaction accrues to surviving victims – or more likely their descendents – of course. Good.
This is a minor consideration. At every level other than the emotional, those so avenged will not be any better off as a result of a formal finding that those they already know to be culpable were indeed guilty.
What is more important is that future generations are not under the impression that atrocity can meet with impunity. It is right to make Demjanjuk stand trial and account for his atrocities, for the historical record alone. Thereafter take him to the hospital, for whatever amount of time he has left.
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15 Responses to “Demjanjuk trial: sometimes symbolism is important”
For Jews – any Jews – to squeal for retribution against Nazis and those who helped them may not be altogether wise.
The crimes inflicted on the Palestinians in the process of establishing the State of Israel are every bit as well-documented as those committed in the Baltic States, in Galicia and the Ukraine a few years earlier.
If anything, the war crimes committed by the Israelis are rather better-documented and far more detailed than those committed by the German armed forces and those who assisted them.
Every village in Palestine was mapped efficiently during the Mandate years; tax records state exactly who lived precisely where precisely when and the recollections of perpetrator and those expelled would make a formidable indictment.
It is probably true, as is claimed, that those Jews who were booted out of Arab countries actually outnumbered the Palestinians who fled, or were compelled to flee, what became pre-1967 Israel but this hardly affects the issue of what befell the Palestinians driven out of Galilee during Operation Broom.
MEA NON CULPA EST
Dodgy internet connections here on the Gulf were responsible for an unintended double posting above.
On the previous thread, Bill Corr, you were all in favour of ethnic cleansing.
But when it involves Israelis and Palestinians, however, you’re opposed to it.
Not very consistent, are you?
Dearie me! Some things have to be explained in detail for some readers, don’t they?
My point, Paul Fauvet, was that the Israelis and their Amen Chorus in the Diaspora ought not to open cans of worms for fear of finding them full of Trojan horses. In other words, don’t let the cat out of the bag in case it gets among the pigeons.
For the Bigendians to start yapping about the crimes of the Ruritanians might well incite the Whatabouters to start yelling about the more recent and well-documented crimes committed by the Bigendians against the Smallendians.
In fact, only the callous cruelty of the Palestinians’ kith and kin – for example, the Palestinian refugees’ being refused citizenship in Lebanon and specifically excluded, in writing, from many trades and professions in Lebanon – and the horrendously high Palestinian birthrate in Gaza has kept the issue a live issue.
By way of contrast, a war-scarred and impoverished Germany with all its cities in rubble and ash, reduced in size and occupied by four former enemies, absorbed a far larger number of refugees in almost no time. Ditto the Cypriots after the Turkish invasion. Ditto India and Pakistan.
As things stand, the Israelis are faced with the fact that Jewish immigration has slowed to a crawl and the ‘Israeli’ Arab population – a minority with no real loyalty to the State of Israel – is steadily growing. Look at the people the ‘Israeli’ Arabs choose to elect and then deny that there’s a hideous problem gradually building up.
Concerning ‘Israeli’ Arabs, this is of interest:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook11302009.html
As to the Demjanjuk trial, I believe I’m right in saying that the bestial Huns have already decided, in writing, that no further GERMANS are to stand trial for regrettable excesses they might have committed, in a moment of zeal or hot-blooded over-enthusiasm, during the National Socialist period.
Will this be the last trial or are zealous prosecutors hoping to nail some Flemings, Dutchmen, Latvians or Hungarians for having assisted the Third Reich in its hour of need?
Dave,
I fully appreciate your libertarian stance on your blog concerning comments, but Bill Corr is a real bigot and will fill your comments boxes full of his small minded bigotry and prejudices.
You would do well to make an exception on your comments policy, just for Bill Corr.
“South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission guaranteed kid glove treatment to the architects of apartheid.”
This, incidentally, is a truly juvenile view of what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was about. I guess Dave misses the ferocious bloodletting and vengeance fest that would have followed a victory for his beloved “Trots” in South Africa, but since these people played no part in the struggle to overthrow apartheid they didn’t have any right to dictate the aftermath, unfortunately (fortunately for the rest of us, however).
LobbyLudd is an enigma, every now and again I see the comment “Motes and Beams, Morality, Motes and Beams” and it cracks me up every time.
So please forgive me for stealing your phrase,
Morality, sorry Modernity said in defence of Coatsey,
“Rather than go on a predictable witch hunt leading to a slanging match, why not try to advance some arguments”
then he said to Andrew Coates mate Bill Corr,
“Bill Corr, fuck off and do it now.”
And now he wants people banned (albeit the odious Bill Corr)
Beams and Motes Morality, beams and motes!
Having said all of that Modernity’s position on the Minaret issue was far more unequivocal than I would have imagined.
Have we misjudged him?
SteveH,
It would help matters no end if you read what I write rather than put your own interpretations on these issues.
Previously, I wanted Eddie Truman to engage with Andrew Coats in a discussion on these issues,I didn’t want it to be a shouting match, I think that socialists, even with strikingly different points of view should engage in debate, political debate.
Sadly, Eddie Truman doesn’t tend to debate people and has a problem writing more than about two lines, as for Coatsey, he’s perfectly capable of defending himself and needs no help from me, but again I would prefer socialists to debate these issues.
You can disagree with Coatsey all you like but he’s not a racist, unlike Bill Corr.
Corr has been banned from various sites for his open bigotry and inflammatory language, and there is little purpose debating him.
So that’s why I suggested today the course of action that I suggested.
I hope, SteveH, that now you understand it?
PS: If you have some difficulty working out what my views are on anti-Muslim bigots, etc then I suggest you read my blog, I am not exactly shy nor do I imply things when they can be stated directly.
http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/
Dave. I am glad I found your wee BLOG. Some of the comments remind me of my youth and wasting my time listening to the religious looney tunes pretend lefties. Actually they scare me more now. Some defending religion. What next the BNP. When you are young you are a bit daft and do not care much. I am glad I joined the Labour Party. At least the working class get something rather than verbal crap.
Modernity,
Understood.
O Modernity – one is not hurt but one is genuinely puzzled.
Can a honkie married to a person of colour genuinely qualify as a racist? Is a certificate confirming that one is a certified racist awarded by someone like the irrepressible Mrs Alibhai-Brown if one meets a certain standard?
Incidently, today’s ‘Arab News’ [of Jeddah] reports that Egyptian border police shot dead yet another sub-Saharan African leaving Egyptian territory and crossing into Israel. He was the seventeenth to be shot dead by the Egyptians in similar circumstances.
Is anyone making a fuss about these killings?
If not, why not?
CORRECTION:
The luckless African nailed by the Egyptian marksman was the seventeenth THIS YEAR, as I should have said.
Bill Corr. Just being inquisitive. Can you tell me what this is about. Why are people being killed crossing into Israel especially as it is not the Israelis doing it.
Jimmy Glesga -
Here are the facts as I understand them, but YOU can check out the HAARETZ and JERUSALEM POST websites from time to time for updates:
Wretchedly poor Africans, mainly Sudanese, have somehow heard that Israel is a happy welcoming land with a square meal and a decent place to sleep for all. Many hundreds travel up through Egypt and try to dodge over the border south of the Egyptian crossings into the Gaza Strip.
Whether the Egyptian border guards are ordered to shoot to kill or not is anyone’s guess. People with loaded guns and lackadaisical supervision get bored after hour after hour with nothing to do and their boredom can easily turn into callous cruelty.