Global News Journal

History comes alive at Demjanjuk trial

Entering the Munich court this week to cover the trial of John Demjanjuk, 89, accused of helping to force 27,900 Jews into gas chambers at an extermination camp in 1943, was like stepping into a history book.

Inevitably, the spotlight was on Demjanjuk himself.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s most wanted Nazi war suspect lay under a white blanket on a mobile bed in the middle of the courtroom. Was this old, expressionless and clearly weak man really the “face of evil”?

Efraim Zuroff, head of the Wiensenthal Center’s Jerusalem office echoed the views of many observers when he told Reuters: “Demjanjuk put on a great act. He should have gone to Hollywood, not Sobibor.”

Even to those who believed he was making the most of his frail condition, it was a pitiful sight.

Perhaps most striking, however, was the presence of other Holocaust victims and witnesses of Nazi atrocities.

Germany: a tale of two foreign ministers

“Self-confident”, “smart” and “rhetorically brilliant” – just some of the adjectives the media have lavished upon Germany’s favourite politician as he has covered thousands of miles traversing the globe on his country’s behalf since Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new centre-right administration took office late last month.

But Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is not in charge of foreign affairs — a position usually associated with voter popularity. He is defence minister.

Already nicknamed ”the other foreign minister“, the 37-year-old Guttenberg, a conservative former economy minister who cut his teeth on foreign policy, has won praise for his fluency in English, his directness and his ability to outshine more powerful counterparts on the international stage.

Watching the aristocratic AC/DC fan from the sidelines has been the new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, whom newspapers have mocked for adopting a cautious, defensive approach that critics say is more redolent of, well, a German defence minister.

In fact, Westerwelle, 47, has already travelled thousands of miles further than his predecessor Frank-Walter Steinmeier over the same period. By the time the first month in office has passed he will have journeyed to some 15 states, including Israel, Afghanistan and the United States. Steinmeier managed only 10 and did not get beyond Europe in that time, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Germany might be the winner if its diplomatic duel helps it towards a more assertive foreign policy — something it has struggled to achieve in the long shadow of the Nazis.

But it could also find itself giving mixed messages to the outside world, to say nothing of potential tensions within the new coalition. Guttenberg belongs to the Bavarian CSU and Westerwelle heads the pro-business FDP — parties that have clashed on a range of policies in the past.

Does Sorb’s election win point to a more multicultural Germany?

Under Adolf Hitler, the Nazis tried to extinguish the culture and language of the Sorbs.

This week, a member of Germany’s indigenous Slavic minority won a state election for the first time. Stanislaw Tillich’s victory puts him firmly in control of Saxony, the most populous eastern state – and looks likely to catapult the 50-year-old to the front ranks of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU).

“It was a historic day for the Sorbs,” Alfons Wicaz-Lehmann, deputy editor-in-chief of Serbske Nowiny, the country’s only Sorbian language daily, said of Tillich’s win. “It also shows that members of a minority really can rise to such a high office in this democracy.”

Although they now number only 60,000 and have lived in eastern Germany for well over 1,000 years, Sorbs have retained a distinctive culture and language, despite efforts to suppress them under Prussian domination and then Nazi oppression. Partly because of this they have kept a relatively low profile in Germany, a country whose ageing population and low birth rates could leave it heavily dependent on immigration in the years ahead.

A father of two, Tillich knew only Sorbian until he was “about five” but alongside German, the former member of the European parliament today also speaks Czech, Polish, French and English. Though he inherited the post of state premier last year when his predecessor resigned, Tillich had never faced the Saxon electorate for the job before.

Despite being dogged by media reports linking him to communist East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, he was the only CDU premier to emerge from the three state elections on Sunday with his reputation enhanced. While the CDU’s share of the vote slumped in Thuringia and Saarland - prompting the resignation of Thuringia’s premier Dieter Althaus on Thursday – it held above 40 percent in Saxony as Tillich secured a five year mandate to rule.

“His victory was very important and helps to make the Sorbs better known – because very little is know about us in Germany,” said Wicaz-Lehmann.

Austria’s Graf gets grief over “united Tyrol”

Breaking into the summer holiday lull, Austrian politics has gotten into a lather over a far-right populist’s call for a referendum on whether a mainly German-speaking region of northern Italy should rejoin Austria.

No matter how far-fetched, his proposal raised a hue and cry by challenging the taboo of old unreconstructed nationalism in a country restlessly determined to live down its Nazi past.

South Tyrol – Alto Adige in Italian – is an autonomous, Alpine province of Italy bordering Austria. It was annexed by Italy from defeated Austria-Hungary at the end of World War One.

Italy granted increasing self-government to South Tyrol in the decades after World War Two, defusing separatist unrest by Austro-German speakers. It is now among Italy’s richest regions, with an open border to Austria thanks to EU integration.

But Martin Graf, a rightist deputy speaker of Austria’s parliament, declared on Sunday that South Tyrol was actually “part of overall Tyrol”, and only “currently” within Italy.

The universal right of self-determination should apply for all “the German people” in Europe - just as those in old Communist East Germany got their wish to merge into one Germany at the end of the Cold War in 1990. “It’s time to ask the people if there should be one Tyrol,” Graf said.

Graf owes his parliamentary post due to the fact that his far-right Freedom Party replaced the Greens as Austria’s No. 3 party in last year’s parliamentary election.

Germans have to live with Nazi past a bit longer

More than six decades after World War Two and the Holocaust, and just when it is starting to take a more assertive role on the world stage, Germany has been confronted by its Nazi past – again.

Retired U.S. auto worker John Demjanjuk, 89, has been deported to Germany and prosecutors in Munich want to put him on trial for assisting to murder at least 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943. With most Nazi criminals dead, it is likely to be the last big Nazi war crime trial in Germany.

The case raises a number of questions which affect the way Germans look at themselves and relate to the world around them. The deafening silence from politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, says a lot about how intent Germans are on viewing the case as a purely legal matter.

Demjanjuk’s health poses one problem. While his family says he is is too frail to stand trial, some Germans argue it will not do their justice system any good to have a sick old man in the dock and that he could even end up winning sympathy – a potentially embarrassing outcome.

Others simply ask what purpose his trial would serve. Born in Ukraine, Demjanjuk was a prisoner of war who, his defenders say, was forced to become a death camp guard. He played his part in the enormous horror of the Holocaust but many Germans are all too aware that other major war criminals have escaped justice. Some fled to live in exile and others received light sentences.

It is surprisingly difficult to pin down figures of the number of Germans tried or convicted of war crimes since 1945 but most experts agree with the Simon Wiesenthal Center that the number of criminals brought to justice is way below the total of those involved in the Holocaust.   

Some reports say that of an estimated 200,000 Germans and Austrians involved in the Holocaust, about 106,000 were investigated by German prosecutors and of those, only 6,500 were convicted.