Newspaper Page Text
Friday, Oct. 18, 1968
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Page Seven
Justice Is Often Absent
In War Crimes Trial, Verdicts
By ALFRED WOLFMANN
JTA’s West Germany Correspondent
BONN — The question of the
statute of limitations, which will
ban further prosecution of Nazi
war criminals in murder cases
not yet detected, when it goes
into effect on Dec. 31, 1969, is the
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subject of heated debate in West
Germany today. Should the ef
fective date be extended? Should
the statute be abolished alto
gether? It is a problem that
challenges the conscience of
many sincere Germans. For the
families of victims and for the
remnant of survivors, it is
agonizing to contemplate the ex
emption from justice, only 18
months from now, of participants
in some of the most horrible
crimes in human history.
Yet the debate over the statute
seems almost academic to anyone
who has followed the oourse of
justice so far in the cases of
Nazi criminals. In the first place,
most people outside of Germany
are not aware that a statute of
limitations is already in effect
in all cases short of murder or
complicity in murder. This means
that if someone were found to
morrow to have been responsible
for manslaughter or the most
brutal torture in a Nazi con
centration camp, he cannot even
be brought to trial.
But how often is justice cheat
ed when war criminals are
brought to trial — cheated
not by the accused but by the
presiding judges? The record is
a deplorable one. Ex-Nazis con
victed on irrefutable evidence of
participation in mass murders
walk out of court free men, the
jurors’ findings of “guilty” not
withstanding. Many, of course,
are acquitted outright however
damning the evidence against
them.
An example is the trial of 10
Nazi policemen which ended in
Bochum recently with the ac
quittal of all of them. The de
fendants, members of the notor
ious police battalion 316 during
World War II, were charged with
the murder of 8,800 Jews in
White Russia and Poland between
1941 and 1944. The evidence had
taken 10 years to prepare and
the trial, which dragged on for
17 months, heard 168 eyewit
nesses and experts. The details
as they emerged, told of ghastly
bloodbaths in Bialystok, Barano-
vicze, Mogilew, Broubuisk and
Cholm in which the accused
participated. But they were ac
quitted. The judge explained
that it was a matter of “Befehls-
notstand,” meaning that the ac
cused had been forced to obey
orders, even if innocents were
killed. He said they acted out of
fear for their persons or lives if
they refused.
“Befehlsnotstand” has become
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a favorite legal point in Nazi
war crimes trials though no
evidence has ever been found
that an SS officer or policeman
was ever jailed, let alone shot,
for refusing to obey orders to
kill Jews. The worst punishment
meted out for refusals (there
were a few cases) was transfer
of the soldiers to the Russian
front.That prospect, though hard
ly a pleasant one, cannot from
the jurisdicial point of view, be
construed as sufficient threat to
force a man to follow orders
that violated his basic human
instincts.
The courts admit that they are
only hypothesizing when they
speculate that refusal to partici
pate in mass murders would
have been construed by the Nazi
leadership as “treason” punish
able by death, so that the poor
soldier, or policeman or SS man
acted only to preserve his own
life. The Bochum judge engaged
in a bit of blatant sophistry when
he observed that, after all, there
was no proof that the defendants
did not in fact fear for life and
limb when they committed their
crimes. The jury had no choice
but to acquit them — “Befehls
notstand.'”
But even when Nazis are con
victed of heinous crimes and get
long prison sentences, they often
manage, somehow, to go free
after relatively short periods in
jail. Between 1953 and 1965, eight
hard-core war criminals serving
life sentences were pardoned.
One convicted murderer, Robert
Mulka, the deputy commander of
the notorious Auschwitz death
camp, got out of a 14-year sent
ence on the grounds of ill health
and is now a free man. Others
have accomplished the same thing
though there are plenty of prison
hospitals where the convicts
could be treated. In the case of
Mulka’s and other “medical”
pardons, the criminals were later
observed working in their gar
dens and generally enjoying life.
There are still other anomalies.
When a Nazi does go to jail and
manages to stay there, he is, in
many cases, not deprived of his
civil rights. Take the members
of police battalion 101 who were
tried in Hamberg recently and
sentenced to long prison terms
for the murder of Jewish men,
women and children. They still
enjoy full civil rights. The judge
who decided in the case reasoned
that after all, any German could
have been in their position in
time of war.
Perhaps the most shameful
situation is the failure to bring
to justice Nazi judges who com
mitted murder by gavel when
they pronounced death sentences
on innocent people suspected of
being anti-Nazis or simply of
being Jews. Virtually none of the
judges of the Nazi era has been
called to account. They are one
group that cannot claim it was
blindly following orders nor
could they plead lack of knowl
edge between right and wrong.
The jurists, all university edu
cated with doctorates of law,
certainly knew that murder was
still against the law, even in
Nazi Germany. It was one law
the Nazis did not dare to repeal. “
Yet it was flagrantly broken
time and again, in the country’s
courts of law.
In fairness, it must be noted
that there are in Germany to
day many young judges and
prosecutors who make every ef
fort to bring Nazi criminals to
justice. Many trials are conducted
meticulously and objective ver
dicts are rendered. But in too
many cases, the trials of Nazi
killers are little more than a
facade, the verdicts a palliative
to public opinion and the sent
ences, if carried out, rarely fit
the enormity of the crimes.
Perhaps public opinion inside
and outside of Germany is the
only recourse if this shameful
situation is to be reversed. But
it may be too late. Most people —
and not only in Germany — are
weary of war crimes trials and
are no longer shocked but actual
ly bored by the recital of horrors
and would like to see an end
to it. Unless the statute of limi
tations is abolished or prolonged,
the end of all war crimes prose
cution will come soon.
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