The verdict delivered today by a German court in the case of John Demjanjuk is being hailed in some quarters as proof that neither time nor age is a barrier to tracking down war criminals. Indeed, after so long a pursuit of the 91-year-old former SS concentration camp guard, there is something to be said for a decision that finally settles the question of whether or not he was part of the Nazi death machine. However welcome this decision may be, though, it is no cause for celebration. The Demjanjuk case says more about what was wrong with the hunt for those who tortured and killed Jews during the Holocaust that what was right about it.
A Ukrainian conscript in Stalin’s army, Demjanjuk was captured by the Germans and then volunteered to join the SS. He served as a guard at the Sobibor, Majdanek, and Flossenburg camps, and may well have taken part in atrocities elsewhere as well. After the war, he evaded prosecution and emigrated to America where, after lying about his past, he became a U.S. citizen. But his deceit was eventually uncovered and he was stripped of his citizenship and deported to Israel, which tried and then convicted him of being the infamous “Ivan the Terrible” guard of Treblinka, who took an active and vicious role in mass murder and torture. That conviction was overruled. While there was no doubt that he had been an SS guard, a majority of judges of Israel’s Supreme Court believed there was reasonable doubt as to whether he was “Ivan” or just another SS murderer. Whether or not they were right, Demjanjuk was clearly a monster in his own right. After his return to the United States, further legal proceedings in Germany led to another deportation and finally today’s conviction. He was sentenced to five years in jail for taking part in the murders of 28,000 persons. But it is doubtful that he will serve much time in jail not only because of his age and health but because his long detentions awaiting trials may be credited to his sentence.
Thus, after exhausting every possible legal strategy for delay, not to mention becoming a rallying point for Holocaust deniers and their fellow travelers (and by that I am referring specifically to people like commentator Pat Buchanan who championed Demjanjuk’s cause for years), all that remains is an old man being given what a common felon would consider a slap on the wrist for mass murder.
The reasons for this unhappy conclusion are many: the sloppy pursuit of war criminals in the immediate aftermath of World War Two; the United States’ willingness to ask no questions of those who claimed to be victims of the Soviets even if they were Nazis; and a justice system that was ill-equipped to handle this sort of criminal.
Even a symbolic conviction of Demjanjuk is better than none at all and those who helped track him down deserve great credit. But this case must serve as a reminder that many of the vast numbers who took part in the Nazi genocide were never run to ground or tried, let alone punished. The six million Jewish men, women, and children that Demjanjuk and his comrades slaughtered deserved more than they got from the post-war generation that was tasked with bringing their murderers to justice. And most of the criminals who were caught, like Demjanjuk, deserved far worse than they got from the courts.
Some justice is better than none at all but a Jewish people that continues to be singled out for threats of new Holocausts by the leaders of Iran and their Hamas ally cannot place their trust in international human rights law. The only answer to future Hitlers and their Demjanjuks is the capacity of the Jewish people to defend itself from genocide, not the sorry spectacle that was the long pursuit of one SS guard.
