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May 12, 2009
Posted: 1812 GMT
Demjanjuk has been in this position, when, being accused of having been Ivan the Terrible, a notoriously brutal guard at the Treblinka concentration camp, he was found guilty in an Israeli court in the late 1980s and sentenced to death for his crimes. Subsequent refutations of the facts led to him being exonerated and he returned to his life in the United States. This recent saga got me thinking about the culpability we still assign– 64 years after the end of the war– to these diminutive holdovers of evil. I recently read a novel titled ‘The Kindly Ones’ by Jonathan Littell. Told from the viewpoint of a Nazi bureaucrat, it makes the case (among many cases) that men like Demjanjuk were merely tools of a twisted regime, doing what they were told was their duty. It's not necessarily an idea I believe, it's much more complicated–almost unapproachable in its philosophy. The notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann used this argument in his trial in Israel, stating he was merely a puppet, carrying out orders. He was convicted and executed. The argument continues that the real men of evil—the ones we should hold accountable– were the architects, the brutal designers, the puppet masters of the committed atrocities. Who those people are is vague in and of it self for where does the authoritative voice become the subservient one? Who is the voice of "reason" and who complacently follows "reason" to its inexorable end? No doubt if Demjanjuk is guilty of what he is accused of he did monstrous things. But after living a full life, what is the value of this delayed justice? What do all those who suffered from his acts or from acts similar to his feel about this man who represents so many things to so many people? Posted by: Video Journalist, Zach Pontz |
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