- Last week saw Holocaust survivor Thomas Blatt, 82
give testimony at the trial of John Demjanjuk. Blatt stated that he
still has nightmares about his time at the camp at Sobibor, "I go
there in my dreams, they are so real. In them I am still there. I
can't get it out of my head. This is the price I paid for getting
out."
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- Ukrainian born John Demjanjuk, 89, is accused by the
Munich court of being an 'accessory'* in the death of 27,900 Jews at
the Sobibor camp while being a German POW. As it happens, the German
Justice system is now chasing 'accessories' to the Nazi crime.
Embarrassingly enough it doesn't do very well in the current case.
Demjanjuk denies anything to do with the crime referred to him and
furthermore, the German prosecution lacks any evidence whatsoever that
supports or links Demjanjuk personally with murder or any other
holocaust related criminal event.
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- Mr Blatt does not remember John Demjanjuk either,
nor can he say if he is guilty as charged of helping to gas 27,900
Jews. "More than 60 years have passed" said Blatt "I can't even
remember the faces of my parents. The court must decide if he was
there. If he was there when I was there then I can imagine he shoved
Jews at bayonet point to the gas chambers".
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- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO4lPuRZUvQ
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- According to The Mirror, Blatt was brought to the
court "to give a living voice to the horror instead of a dusty
historical account". Seemingly in our current state of hyper realistic
world affairs, historical documents and factuality are diminished to
"dust" while a personal narrative, saturated with speculation,
associations and emotions are realised as a persuasive 'living voice'.
At the end of the day, Demjanjuk, a geriatric man is accused here of
assisting in the death of no less than 27,900 people. The German court
better bring something concrete rather than mere speculations.
-
- Mr Blatt maintained that "Ukrainians 'like
Demjanjuk' were the worst of the worst. We were more afraid of them
than we were of the Germans." There were "120 Ukrainian guards
compared with only 17 S.S. men at any one time" said Blatt to the
German court. Blatt clearly 'got away' with generalisations. I wonder
whether a Palestinian boy suggesting that Jews 'like Blatt' who killed
his family a year ago dropping bombs on a UN shelter in Gaza, would
also be welcomed at the Munich court. For some bizarre reason, within
the context of the Western liberal discourse, where Jews are
concerned, generalising is okay and so is freely employing racial
categories and even suggesting guilt by association. Somehow the rest
of humanity is advised to avoid such a manner of speech.
-
- However, such crude blanket accusations of the
Ukrainians as a people that apparently pass as evidence in the Munich
court, may actually throw light on the sinister motivation behind the
current court case. Like the rest of humanity, the Germans seem to
show some clear signs of 'Shoa fatigue'. They appear to prefer to
withdraw responsibility from the Nazi past and to leave Ukrainian POWs
to take the heat. Similarly, we could expect that at a certain stage
America and Britain may decide to use the same tactics and to charge
their collaborators in the Arab world for the death and carnage they
themselves left behind. Israel, that is now facing pressure for its
mounting record of crimes against humanity, may also put the German
trick into action. It may also want to cherry pick some Palestinians
and charge them for being accessories to the crimes against the
Palestinian people.
-
- But there is a much more interesting twist to this
evolving shameful legal case. While Demjanjuk denies being an
accessory to the Nazi crime, Mr Blatt freely admits working for the SS
and assisting in what he himself describes as a death machine:
"Another job was to cut the hair of women about to be killed", says
Blatt. "Those from places like Holland believed the lie," he
maintains. "The women would say to me: 'Please don't cut my hair too
short!' But the Polish Jews - they already knew. They had heard too
many stories, smelled the bonfires at night." Blatt continues, "they
would say 'How can you do this? How can you work for the S.S.?' I did
it to survive."
-
- One may wonder why Blatt's will to survive is more
Kosher than an Ukrainian prisoner's desire to come home. In other
words, considering Blatt's admission in assisting the SS, why isn't he
charged by the same German court for being an 'accessory' for the Nazi
crime?
-
- One possible answer is that Blatt is a Jew and
Demanjuk is a Goy. As sad as it may be, in the eyes of the Munich
court, a Jew's will to 'survive' must be superior to an Ukrainian's
desire to make it to the end of the war in one piece. If this is
indeed the case, the German court fails to operate ethically and
universally. Accordingly, it would be reasonable to argue that the
Munich court fails to draw the necessary and elementary lesson from
Germany's Nazi past. German Justice somehow differentiates between
people according to their race and ethnicity.
-
- ...................
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- *An 'accessory' is a person who assists in the
commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the
commission of the crime as a joint principal.
- To read more:
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- http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/accessory-vs-perpetrator-by-gilad-atzmon.html
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