Evil Old Men

How far should we go to prosecute suspected Nazi war criminals?

By Howard Altman

Remembering the old man on the faraway stage makes me think that there really is a God, after all.

The old man was John Demjanjuk. A native of the Ukraine, he was accused of being Ivan the Terrible, a guard at the Treblinka death camp, where I am sure a number of my relatives were among the tens of thousands who perished by gas, overwork, starvation or disease.

He was on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against humanity. It was fate and curiosity more than anything that led me to the trial. In Israel to see my folks and file stories with a number of different papers looking for news of the Middle East, I was wandering around the modern section of the ancient city when I stumbled upon what appeared to be a concert hall of some kind.

Flashing my Israeli press pass, I walked in, not knowing where I was going or what I was getting into. I learned long ago that sometimes I have to pretend I know what I am doing even if I have no idea, and in this case, even if I can't speak the language.

I followed some people up the stairs to an auditorium, and took a seat, way high in the back.

The scenery on stage was sparse.

The old man.

A couple of desks.

A couple of other actors, who turned out to be prosecutors and lawyers.

And some stenographical assistants.

I had no idea what I was watching.

Headphones were provided. I switched the channel to English, but got nothing.

Then, from the stage, I heard the word Demjanjuk.

And I realized this was the man thought to be Ivan the Terrible.

On trial. On stage. Right in front of me.

I have not had the privilege of seeing many old Nazis in person. So I decided to stay a while and listen, even though I understood next to nothing of what was being spoken.

I did, however, understand what they were talking about.

The mass murder of my people. A horrific concept fresh on my mind thanks to where I was and the fact that, only hours before, I'd paid a visit to Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's haunting Holocaust memorial.

Who was this old man, I wondered?

Did he really do what they say he did?

The answer to the first question will probably never be fully known to anyone other than John Demjanjuk.

Neither will the answer to the second.

And while I will never have those answers, the questions are what makes me think that I really do believe in God.

There is great debate about old men like Demjanjuk and, more recently, Jonas Stelmokas, the 80-year-old retired Philadelphia architect accused of helping Lithuanians kill Jews.

The debate is particularly urgent now that the living victims and perpetrators and witnesses of the Holocaust will all soon be dead.

How far should we go to prosecute the old men?

How much can we rely on 50-year-old memories?

Demjanjuk, for instance, was convicted in 1988 by an Israeli court of crimes against humanity. But, in 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned that conviction, saying that — though it is highly likely that Demjanjuk played some role in the Final Solution — another man might have been Ivan the Terrible.

Demjanjuk, meanwhile, spent seven years in an Israeli prison.

Was that right?

Was it wrong?

Should Stelmokas be deported for lying about his background when he entered the country in 1949?

Two weeks ago, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that Stelmokas lied when he entered the country. Stelmokas claimed that the only group he joined before 1945 was the Lithuanian Boy Scouts. Prosecutors argued successfully that he was a member of a police battalion that helped the Nazis kill Jews.

Senior Circuit Court Judge Ruggero Aldisert wrote a dissenting opinion on that case, basically arguing that such prosecutions are wrong because the events happened so long ago that witness recollections are unreliable.

Aldisert was immediately, and not surprisingly, criticized for his opinion.

But he does have a point.

I have covered a number of murder trials and found that human memory is often the least valuable tool in a prosecutor's arsenal, even for recent events, because it is fallible and, sometimes, skewed.

Aldisert wrote that pursuing cases against old men like Demjanjuk and Stelmokas would push the envelope beyond traditional notions of due justice. That it is unfair to go after the old men because their accusers are old men and women with failing memory.

Aldisert's opinion raises some unhappy questions.

Unlike a number of his critics, I agree with Aldisert that 50-year-old memories are a shaky foundation for an accusation. I have seen cases where 5-year-old memories turned out to be useless.

Unlike Aldisert, however, I think that we must pursue the old men, because to forget would be an injustice to the victims and an encouragement to the future evil old men of the world.

But these cases must be iron-clad.

When there is a high degree of doubt, as existed with Demjanjuk, I argue that prosecutors should think long and hard about bringing a case to trial.

There is no earthly comfort I will ever get from letting the evil old men go free because we don't have the answers.

There is only this.

The questions make me think that there really is a God.

Because, if there is, God will have the answers.

And the evil old men who do go free will finally have to face the music.