At long last, the seemingly endless saga of Ivan Demjanjuk appears to have finally
come to an end. What began in the United States in the 1970s as an
investigation of a suspected armed SS Ukrainian guard at the Sobibor
death camp, concluded more than 35 years later in a Munich courtroom
with a verdict confirming that initial allegation. This was a successful
result for one of the most complicated and difficult cases of a Nazi
war criminal. And rather than being the last of such trials, there
is reason to believe that it might set a precedent for further prosecution
of those remaining Holocaust perpetrators who have managed to evade
justice.
After Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel in 1986, I sat through many of the sessions
in the Jerusalem District Court and later in the Supreme Court. This
was one of the many roller coaster moments in the history of this
case, which has always provided plenty of intense drama — joy upon
his initial conviction and death sentence, followed by deep disappointment
and frustration when it became clear in the appeal process that Demjanjuk
was probably only another terrible Ivan and not “Ivan the Terrible.”
After the Supreme Court determined that he was not the person who operated the
gas chambers at Treblinka, Demjanjuk was convicted finally in 1993
only of “membership in a Nazi organization,” which was punishable
by seven years imprisonment, which he had already served. I petitioned
for the Simon Wiesenthal Center to have him tried again in Israel,
this time for his “less terrible” role at Sobibor, but all petitions
for a retrial were rejected.
The prospects of further prosecution seemed very unlikely
back then, and once Demjanjuk’s US citizenship was restored, it seemed
practically impossible. But the Justice Department’s Office of Special
Investigations refused to give up and again sought his denaturalization
and deportation, this time for his service in Sobibor and additional
Nazi concentration camps. We would have never reached the final verdict,
however, without what can only be regarded as a revolutionary change
in German prosecution policy. This is what ultimately led to the
unprecedented step by the German authorities to seek Demjanjuk’s
extradition from the United States.
From 1949, when West Germany assumed full responsibility
for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, until about three years
ago, German prosecutors generally sought to bring to justice only
officers and only those who were Germans, Austrians or Volksdeutsche,
ethnic Germans living abroad. This policy intentionally ignored tens
of thousands of Holocaust perpetrators who had actively participated
in mass murder. In Germany’s defense, because of the great number
of people who belonged in that category, it would have been impossible
to prosecute all the Nazi war criminals still alive in the ‘50s,
‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, and thus priority had to be given to those with
command responsibility. In recent years, though, that was no longer
the case. We therefore tried to encourage a change in this policy,
even giving Germany a failing grade in our 2007 Annual Report. But
it was the Demjanjuk case and the energetic lobbying efforts of the
OSI that ultimately convinced the Germans to prosecute Demjanjuk,
who was neither an officer nor of German origin.
This decision was not the only revolutionary aspect
of the case. Demjanjuk’s conviction marks the first time that a German
court has found a suspected Holocaust perpetrator guilty without
any evidence of a specific crime committed by the defendant, other
than service in a death camp. As a Holocaust historian, I can easily
justify such a decision. Imagine, though, what a profound impact
such an exhibition of judicial will could have had on previous trials
of Nazi war criminals and other cases that were never prosecuted
if this standard of proof had been applied.
So now the question is: Will this verdict serve as
a precedent that can pave the way for additional prosecutions? Only
time will tell, but a day before the Demjanjuk verdict, we received
a stark reminder of the limits of such judicial will. A Bavarian
court refused to extradite to The Netherlands convicted SS executioner
Klaas Faber, who took part in killing 22 innocent individuals in
Holland. Faber escaped from a Dutch prison in 1952 and has been spared
extradition ever since by the German citizenship he obtained for
his service in the SS.
One can only hope that the Demjanjuk verdict will,
rather than marking the end of such prosecutions, influence and encourage
German prosecutors. In Faber’s case, as in a few others, there is
not much time left if we want to see justice finally prevail.
forward.com
|