They Were Sadists, Simple Like That

The above statement was made by Thomas Blatt, a prisoner at the Sobibor camp at the same time John Demjanjuk was supposed to be working there. He made the statement when he was being interviewed after testifying. Blatt's entire family was murdered at the extermination camp, but he was selected to work and against all odds, he survived. Demjanjuk has been brought to trial in Germany to face 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder during World War II, at the camp where Blatt's family was killed.
Demjanjuk is a perfect example of how the prosecution of Nazi war criminals goes these days. The 89-year-old accused Nazi moved to the U.S. in 1952 and built a life in Cleveland, where he worked in the car industry. He raised a family and went on to enjoy all the pleasures of life that he and his ilk denied to their victims at Sobibor. His family have been bleating that he is too frail to stand trial because he suffers from kidney disease, cancer and arthritis. In May, he was admitted to hospital for three days after developing gout. Poor old man, eh? You can bet the description of his current state of health would have fitted many a gas chamber victim. It didn't stop the Nazis from herding them to their deaths at bayonet point, as Blatt has described in eye-witness testimony. The German deputy prison director, Jochen Menzel, says on the other hand that Mr Demjanjuk was in strikingly good condition. "He is not typical for his age... he is in better shape than usual for an 89-year-old," he told German news channel N24. The US government, which secretly shot footage showing the supposedly frail Demjanjuk walking without assistance, seemed to agree with Menzel when they ordered his deportation to face the charges against him.
The question will be not so much whether or not this former Nazi will be found guilty as what will be done with him if he is found guilty. If found guilty, it is all too likely that the case will then go the way too many cases against convicted Nazi war criminals now go. The convicts are handled with kid gloves, because of their age and varying states of health. It should make no difference, no difference at all, just as it made no difference to them during the war the age or state of health of their victims.
Efraim Zuroff, top Nazi-hunter at Jerusalem's Simon Wiesenthal Centre, considers Demjanjuk the world's most-wanted suspected Nazi war criminal, and welcomes his being brought to trial. "This is obviously an important step forward," he told the Associated Press. "We hope ... he can be given the appropriate punishment. The effort to bring Demjanjuk to justice sends a very powerful message that the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrator." (emphasis my own)
In the 1950s and 1960s, German judge and prosecutor Fritz Bauer estimated there were 100,000 Germans responsible in one way or another for mass killings of Jews during the war. The judge also said fewer than 5,000 people had been prosecuted. That is such a small number, such a pathetically small number compared to the total estimated, which some have put as high as 300,000. Many circumstances have come between the murderers and justice, and while it would be good to catch even more, the fact is that time itself has now decreed the number of those still alive to face justice is nearly at an end. Those we do have in custody, however, are a very different story.
The way that the law does deal with these criminals now is almost becoming a very badly scripted sitcom. Look at Erich Priebke,for instance. In 1998, when he was in his eighties, he was sentenced to jail for life in Italy, for his part in the massacre of 335 Italians in 1944. Although he gave no mercy to those of his victims who were old or in ill health, in 1999 he was given leave to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest in his lawyer's home, because he was supposedly in ill health.
He must have experienced a miraculous recovery, because he was later briefly allowed to work at his lawyer's offices in Rome. Thankfully, his work permit was cancelled following a firestorm of protest. This farce would have come to a much different end, if justice had really been served.
Prosecutors who feel bad sentencing old men to prison are allowing themselves to feel maudlin concern over the welfare of those who felt no concern at all over the welfare of helpless innocents. Why should it be of any concern to anyone at all if these animals are now in poor health and/or their old age? Remember those they killed- the babies, the grandmas and grandpas- the countless, terrified, helpless victims who had no recourse to any mercy. Dr. Zuroff says it well when he declares, "Old age is no excuse for murder." Prosecutors who feel bad about consigning some evil, old man to jail might feel much better if jail were not a consideration. Rather than send any of them to jail, send them out back of the jail. Stand them up in front of the wall, or give them a chair to sit on in front of the wall. Either way, do it immediately following the last bang of the judge's gavel. Fill their heads with bullets and then dig their corpses into undisclosed flower beds. Pushing up the daises might be the most positive thing they will ever have done.
Cry me no river over their jail time or my aggressively hostile attitude toward them. It is interesting to note here a statement made by a high Nazi official who said, "The fifth commandment, 'Thou shall not kill,' is not God's commandment at all: it is a Jewish invention." Serving the death sentence on people who make such declarations and affirm them with their actions should not be a burden on any one's conscience. The actions of those convicted of war crimes precludes all possibility of rights for them. Concern over the supposed rights of evildoers should not cause us to forget the rights stolen from their victims. These killers deserve the same merciless sentences they handed out.