"Trials just serve to make Germans feel better"

So says Rebecca Wittmann, associate professor of German postwar legal history at the University of Toronto, when referring to the trial of John Demjanjuk, former guard at the Nazi death camp Sobibor. Wittman's claim is that such trails as the current one don't necessarily right the wrongs perpetrated by the Nazis themselves or by the German judicial system after the war, but that they do at least allow the German people to feel that "something's being done".
Lawyers for the 89-year-old Demjanjuk are casting about in several directions to find the defense guaranteed to get the evil old man off the legal hook. One card they're making the most of is Demjanjuk's supposed frail health and his advanced years. They do not, however, deny that he was a guard at Sobibor. His being a guard there means, absolutely, that he participated in the vicious treatment directed at unfortunates of every age, including the frail elderly. There is no record extant of Demjanjuk having protested the abuse of elders at Sobibor. Why should his age now constitute any kind of protection for him?
Demjanjuk lawyer Ulrich Busch is crying legal discrimination, pointing out that other evildoers of higher rank than Demjanjuk have been acquitted in the past. Busch feels that means his client should be let go, and has filed a motion to have the judges and prosecutors removed. While Busch is correct in his claim that some have been able to go scotfree instead of being made to face justice, bigger fish than Demjanjuk have also been fried by the courts of justice. Neither occurrence establishes a legal precedent which means Demjanjuk should be allowed to go free. Demjanjuk worked at Sobibor as a "wachmann", a guard subordinate to the SS men, and he is now facing 27,900 counts of accessory to murder, based on the number of people transported to Sobibor and killed there during the time he was busily helping the SS.
Demjanjuk's lawyers, while not disputing his presence as a guard at the camp, are disputing his being there by choice, and are insisting that he was merely following orders. If they are so concerned about legal precedent, they should keep in mind the fact that earlier Nazi war trials have thrown out the following of orders as defense. Goering and Joachim von Ribbentrop, Keitel and Hans Frank, among others, were all sentenced to death after unsuccesful use of that defense.
Demjanjuk was assessed two hours before his appearance in court by a doctor and declared able to stand trial. He first appeared in the courtroom in his wheelchair, and then later on a gurney covered by multiple blankets. He remained silent when asked by a judge if he could answer basic questions and kept his mouth slightly open while twitching his left hand. All this should be guaranteed to give the lie to the doctor's assessment and melt the hardest heart, don't you think? The poor old man; who could bring them self to subject this frail senior to the tortures of the courtroom?
We all know it didn't matter how frail or infirm the elderly who were brought ot Sobibor looked. It made no difference to their captors or their executioners. Perhaps it is time for Demjanjuk to stop trying so hard to look pitiful. Perhaps he should simply leave his fate to the blindfolded Lady Justice. Let's see if she will be more kind to him than he was to the seniors he helped send to their deaths.