If anyone hoped that the
horrific crimes committed at the Sobibor death camp would occupy
centre stage at the opening of the Demjanjuk trial, they were in
for a rude awakening in Munich.
The mass-murder of 250,000 Jews in one of the lesser-known death
camps in Poland was not yet the subject of the deliberations and
unfortunately did not come up in the courtroom.
Instead, two issues dominated — the health of the defendant
and the claims of his attorney that Demjanjuk should not be prosecuted
since higher-ranking commanders and guards of the camps in which
he served had either been ignored, acquitted or given lighter sentences
that he is likely to receive.
Besides the proceedings, it was the chaos surrounding the event
which got most of the attention. With hundreds of journalists in
Munich to cover the opening of the trial, but with the court relatively
unprepared for the media onslaught, hundreds of us were left waiting
outside in near-freezing weather, hoping against hope to obtain a
coveted seat in the courtroom.
This meant that those who came to press an agenda had a captive
audience of hundreds of frustrated journalists and camera crews hungry
for news.
Whether it was a survivor urging people to remember Holocaust crimes
and giving out candles to light, or a person demanding an investigation
of a fire in a Munich synagogue in 1970, or those who came to give
interviews on their views on Holocaust justice or related topics,
they all had plenty of journalists looking for an alternative story
in case they did not make it into the courtroom.
The scene brought back memories of the long lines to attend the
opening of the Demjanjuk trial in the Binyanei ha-Uma convention
centre in Jerusalem in 1987.
Only then it was a crowd primarily composed of amcha, regular people
from all over Israel who wanted to attend the proceedings. There
did not appear to be practically any such people there at the opening
of the trial in Munich, and it turned the opening of the trial into
more of a media event than anything else.
Once inside the courtroom, there were stringent security checks.
At some point, everyone allowed in found him or herself confined
with dozens of others in a completely closed-off area, which aroused
among many of us unpleasant associations of the places where Demjanjuk
served.
While there, I had a strange encounter which served as a chilling
reminder of why such trials are so important.
I mentioned the crimes committed at Sobibor to a person next to
me, to which a middle-aged blonde lady behind me interjected: “What
crimes?”
When I responded that I was referring to the crimes of the Holocaust,
her retort was “What did the Ukrainians have to do with that?”
I succinctly noted the important role played by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators
in the mass-murder of Jews during the Shoah, but I doubt they convinced
the woman who, a bit later (we were “incarcerated” together
for quite some time awaiting entry to the court), started speaking
to me about the “Jewish race”.
It was only later, that I learned her identity.
A Ukrainian living in Germany, she is the wife of one of Demjanjuk’s
defence attorneys, who yesterday attempted to compare his client,
a volunteer for service with the SS who was a guard at the Sobibor
death camp, to Thomas Blatt, a survivor of the camp whose family
was murdered there.
I rest my case.
thejc.com
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