Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 8, 1993 TAG: 9308080157
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
By CAROL MORELLO PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
JERUSALEM - Both the criminals and the victims of World War II's murder factories are old.
Most are in their 70s and 80s, and they are dying off. At a distance of five decades, memories are starting to fade.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of Nazi war criminals and their collaborators remain at large. But the acquittal of John Demjanjuk - the only man ever tried in Israel for war crimes, apart from Adolf Eichmann, who was convicted in 1962 and hanged - may make it even more difficult to bring them to justice.
In fact, Demjanjuk's trial probably was the last big Nazi war crimes trial Israel will ever conduct.
This is not only because most of the first- and second-tier architects of Hitler's Final Solution are dead or sentenced.
Not only because Demjanjuk's acquittal underscores the difficulty of relying on the memories, no matter how vivid, of aging witnesses to prosecute crimes committed half a century ago.
Not only because the case may make countries where Nazis and their collaborators fled after World War II more reluctant to pursue war criminals living among them.
It is also because, as Israel's Supreme Court ruling underscored with reasoning that has brought Israel equal measure of honor and anguish, a page is being turned: the page on which the Holocaust is written.
This is not to suggest that the Holocaust is any less central to native Israelis' self-identity and collective memory than it was to their parents and grandparents. But native Israelis - sabras - have many more pressing matters in their lives, more immediate crises to face. On the afternoon of the Supreme Court ruling, callers to radio talk shows were equally divided between older people wanting to talk about Demjanjuk and younger people opining on the military situation in southern Lebanon and a government corruption scandal.
"The whole experience has been a watershed for Israel," said Harry Wall, director of the Israeli office of the Anti-Defamation League.
"We're into a third generation. Now most say, `We've got more important things to do than getting bogged down in ferreting out Nazi war criminals.'
"The Holocaust is not taken for granted. It's well understood. But what this trial does - in a way, totally unintentionally - is help reinforce a concept [Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin and Labor [party members] keep driving home:" Let's not live in the past.
"The world is no longer against us. The enemy no longer wants to drive us into the sea - it's sitting at the negotiating table with us. Let's look ahead.
"It removes this weight that's been a prison, coloring the way we look at everything."
The high court did not ignore that weight. It seemed to deliver its decision to free Demjanjuk in two voices: One addressed to the new generation and one recognizing how devastating this would be to the old.
Thus the justices emphasized the credibility of the five Holocaust survivors who testified that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible, the brutal Ukrainian who collaborated with the Nazis by becoming an SS guard at the Treblinka death camp in Poland.
But then, citing recently discovered KGB files about 37 Treblinka guards who were executed by the Russians decades ago, the same five justices unanimously ruled there was a reasonable doubt whether Demjanjuk was the same Ivan who had smashed skulls and hacked off the ears, noses and breasts of prisoners before he gleefully gassed them.
Even while they raised the "gnawing" doubt that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible, they did not exonerate him as Ivan the Innocent. The high court concluded he was probably an SS guard at other camps and had participated in the murder of Jews. But his trial had focused almost completely on the "Ivan" charge. So, on the basis of two of the most basic principles of jurisprudence - reasonable doubt and the right to self-defense - they reluctantly decided to free him.
Repeatedly, as if pleading to the nation to forgive them for releasing a man they clearly considered a Nazi, the justices wrote that they were only human. Most of the 500 pages in the decision were taken up with damning details, not with a rationale for granting freedom.
If words were any balm - and clearly they were not to many Holocaust survivors - the court's Hebrew-language decision referred to Demjanjuk with the German word for camp guards and used the first name he was given in his native Ukraine, a subtle reminder that he could not escape his past.
"Wachmann Ivan Demjanjuk has been acquitted by us because of doubt of the terrible charges attributed to Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka," the justices wrote in conclusion. "This was the proper course for judges who cannot examine the heart and the mind, but have only what their eyes see and read. The matter is closed - but not complete. The complete truth is not the prerogative of the human judge."
It may fall to a higher authority than any earthbound court to eventually bring a Day of Reckoning to most of the still-living Nazis and their non-German collaborators scattered across the globe.
As many as 10,000 collaborators are said to be living in the United States, having fled here after the war, but no law permits trying them for crimes against humanity. Little can be done but strip them of citizenship for lying about their Nazi past on immigration applications, as has happened to 45 "Nazi persecutors" - including Demjanjuk - since the Office of Special Investigations was formed in 1979.
Canada and Britain have broad-based war crimes laws, but prosecutors must prove actual participation in murder. Because few survivors are still alive to testify against suspects, hundreds of investigations are expected to result in no more than a few dozen trials.
The trend is discouraging for those dedicated to hunting down Nazis, no matter where they may be hiding.
Australia closed its special prosecutions unit for war crimes last year without having obtained a single conviction.
In Germany, five people are on trial and prosecutors have open files on almost 10,000 suspects. But Nazi hunters say both suspects and witnesses are becoming too feeble to undergo the strenuous, emotion-sapping rigors of a war crimes court trial.
Indeed, there are few high-ranking Nazis left to try. Most of those who oversaw the Final Solution have long since died. Consequently, many Nazi hunters focus on collaborators from Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics like Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Many killed Jews with as much enthusiasm as did the Germans, either as concentration camp guards or as roving death squads.
"It's costly and politically inexpedient for countries to track down Nazis," said Efraim Zuroff, head of the Israeli branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "It arouses the opposition of ethnic groups like Lithuanians and Estonians. And these people are old, so they get sympathetic public opinion even though they don't deserve it."
Among Nazi hunters like Zuroff, one major prey has consistently eluded them. Alois Brunner, 81, was the principal assistant of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann. He is considered responsible for deporting 128,000 Jews from France, Slovakia, Greece and Austria.
For years, Brunner was believed to be living in Syria under an assumed name. There have been unconfirmed reports that he died, or is living under a new identity in Egypt.
Perhaps only Brunner's capture could make most Israelis want to withstand the heart-wrenching trauma that a major Nazi trial subjects the entire nation to as eyewitnesses give stomach-churning accounts from the witness stand.
For better or worse, Israel seems to be coming to the conclusion that the task of condemning the Nazis is becoming the province of historians and God, not judges.
"The Demjanjuk trial has in essence put an end to trials of Nazis, which began with the Nuremberg trial and reached their peak with the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem," editorialized the daily newspaper Maariv. "From now on, only history will judge the Nazis."
by CNB