SS death squad veterans escape trial in shock decision by German prosecutors
V PROVEN MEMBERS of Nazi death squads will not be put on trial without further evidence, German prosecutors have the told the JC.
The shocking decision has outraged Holocaust investigators and dashes hopes that Germany will ensure all surviving alleged perpetrators face justice. The policy is in stark contrast to the treatment of concentration camp guard personnel, who in recent years have been held responsible for their part in the Nazi killing machine regardless of individual actions.
The mobile death squads known as Einsatzgruppen (“special action groups”) were tasked with carrying out systematic large-scale executions. The units are estimated to have murdered an estimated 1.5 million Jews.
Earlier this month the JC reported how SS veteran Herbert Wahler, 99, is living in an idyllic small German town.
He has admitted to having served in Einsatzgruppe C, part of which carried out the massacre of almost 34,000 Jewish men, women and children in Babyn Yar in the Ukraine in 1941. He denies taking part in the killing and claims he was serving as a medic.
But now prosecutors have said that Wahler and any other former Einsatzgruppe members will not be tried unless it can be proven that their particular sub-group was directly involved in the slaughter.
The killing at Babyn Yar was carried out by members of Sonderkommando 4a, which was part of the wider Einsatzgruppe C.
At Germany’s Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, the chief prosecutor, Thomas Will, told the JC: “You cannot say from the start that a member of an Einsatzgruppe is automatically guilty of
Anyone who was in these squads aided and abetted murder
of assisted murder. This is not possible. It doesn’t work that way.
“Of course, I know that the Einsatzgruppen were involved in systematic killings, and that this was what they were set up for.
“But this doesn’t allow me to avoid judicial principles.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s renowned chief Nazi-hunter, historian Dr Efraim Zuroff, reacted in disbelief and said the authorities’ stance was “devastating”. He said: “Wahler has already admitted that he was a member of Einsatzgruppe C — twice, in two separate interviews. Doesn’t that then tie him to a time and place?”
Mr Zuroff was particularly shocked that the precedent set by the conviction of concentration camp John Demjanjuk for being part of the Nazi killing machine regardless of individual actions was not being applied to case of Einsatzgruppen veterans.
He said: “What else do these prosecutors need? The whole significance of the Demjanjuk precedent was to end the situation whereby German prosecutors were being severely hindered in their ability to bring former Nazis to trial who really had a lot of blood on their hands.
“Babyn Yar was one of the largest mass murders in the Holocaust, and the SS Einsatzgruppen were used to inflict the maximum impact and have the maximum number of victims.”
Mr Zuroff said he had supplied the names of 80 alleged perpetrators to Mr Will’s office but not one had been brought to trial.
He said: “These Einsatzgruppen murdered a million and a half Jews and other Nazi enemies. Day in and day out they shot innocent people.
“It is true that it is easier from the point of view form documentation to gather evidence on those serving in concentration camps. But life should be about doing the right thing, not about doing the easy thing.”
Other Holocaust experts also took issue with the prosecutor’s policy.
Professor Lawrence Douglas of Amherst college said: “The Einsatzgruppen were mobile extermination units. Any member of an Einsatzgruppe necessarily aided and abetted murder inasmuch as murder was the function of these squads. To my mind, then, the Demjanjuk precedent clearly extends to members of Einsatzgruppen.”
Rachel Century, Head of Research at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: “Jewish people in the Holocaust, and other victim groups, did not have a choice. Historian Lawrence Langer calls the choices they were faced with “choiceless choices”. But the perpetrators, the men in the Einsatzgruppen, the secretaries, the train drivers, they all did have a choice. And therefore, one could argue, they should be brought to task for their choice.”
Mr Will claimed the large size of the Einsatzgruppe C, around 1,000 soldiers, along with the different responsibilities of smaller sub-units made it hard to gather evidence against individuals.
He said: “This was a fluid, constantly changing situation. We are dealing with completely fragmented groups.” Dozens of Einsatzgruppen members were believed still to be alive in 2018.
The prosecutors’ policy towards them seems to fly in the face of German procedure when dealing with cases of former Nazis over the past decade.
Before then, trials had focused on whether the accused could be convicted of having directly participated in crimes. But the case of Demjanjuk in 2011 heralded a new approach. The authorities decided that he had been part of the wider Nazi “killing machine” as a guard at Sobibor. He was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of nearly 30,000 Jews.
Mr Will told the JC: “We were able to determine that because we were dealing with extermination camps, whose exclusive purpose was killing and everyone who went there was not supposed to survive.
“We were able to say that the men were responsible for the deaths committed there, given that they were part of this killing machine through all the guard duties they did. But in the case of the Einsatzgruppen, we were not able to determine all of this.”
He added: “You must understand. I am not trying to prevent the prosecution of people who were members of Einsatzgruppen. It is not that I could do something but don’t want to, this is not the case.
“We have to work judicially. We have to prove things.”