The Shoa Must Go On

Gilad Atzmon

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."

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.

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".



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 Seemingly in our current state of hyper realistic world affairs, historical documents and factuality are diminished to "dust" while a personal narrative, saturated with speculation, associations and emotions are realised as a persuasive 'living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.



*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.
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