THE LAST NAZI: SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST RETURN TO GERMANY FOR THE RECKONING OF A LOW-RANKING SS SERGEANT TURNED DAIRY FARMER. A LOOK AT WHY THE VERDICT MATTERS EVEN AFTER SEVEN DECADES.
HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS — INCLUDING TWO CANADIANS — ANXIOUSLY AWAIT A VERDICT AS A 94-YEAR-OLD FORMER SS GUARD FACES HIS DAY OF RECKONING
They are the last eyewitnesses, their hair white, their gait unsteady, but cloaked in determination as powerful as their memories. They crossed oceans and continents to testify in what may be this country’s final Nazi trial.
And now they return to this quaint city for the verdict that is expected Friday.
Their numbers are quickly dwindling and so for them, the added responsibility is to seek justice, to speak for the 1.3 million Jews murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau; for their mothers and fathers, younger brothers and baby sisters, all those who did not share what in Yiddish is called their mazel, the luck, to escape Hitler’s Final Solution.
For seven decades, Reinhold Hanning had luck of a different kind.
Before he retired, the 94-yearold widower ran a dairy in the neighbouring town of Lage, where no one knew of his SS past, or didn’t care. He wasn’t one of the leaders, just a young, low-ranking SS sergeant following orders.
At his comfortable home surrounded by a well-tended rose garden, the grandfather of three is not available to speak. “This is very difficult for us and for him, too,” says his daughter-in-law.
Hanning almost escaped this day of reckoning, as so many have, except for this race against time, a new legal push by some extraordinary German jurists ashamed of their nation’s past efforts to prosecute its lowerlevel henchmen.
In the last five years, lawyers have argued that these SS functionaries at Auschwitz were indispensable cogs in the engine of genocide who must be tried as accessories to murder.
The novel legal strategy won convictions against John Demjanjuk in 2011 and Oskar Groning, the “Bookkeeper of Auschwitz,” in 2015.
Now, after a trial that began in February, Hanning will arrive by wheelchair at the courthouse Friday to hear judgment on charges he aided and abetted the murder of more than 100,000 Jews at Auschwitz. If convicted, prosecutors are seeking a six-year sentence.
In the courtroom to see justice done will be many of the Holocaust survivors who testified against him earlier this year, including two plaintiffs from Toronto. They walk each day haunted by the horrors they witnessed at Auschwitz, yet Bill Glied, 85, and Hedy Bohm, 88, are remarkably free of hatred and bitterness.
They feel compelled to return here not to seek vengeance, they say, but the due process their murdered siblings and parents never received from the Nazis.
“This is monumental for us, absolutely monumental,” explains Bohm hours after she’s arrived back in Detmold for the second time in three months. “Seventy years ago, this man helped murder my family and I wouldn’t be here when he’s brought to justice? Wouldn’t you be? This is something I never ever dared to dream of.
“I thought it would be terrible to be here in Germany and to be surrounded by the German language that I dreaded in Auschwitz, but because of the wonderful people I have met, it took the weight and the heaviness from my heart.”
She bristles when asked about those who suggest that as an old man, Hanning should be left alone.
“Whoever asks that question of me, I would ask them, ‘How would they feel if their mother and father and family were murdered, would it matter if they found the murderer 70 years later?’ I’m sure they would want justice, no matter how long it took.”
For Glied, too, this is a moment in history he dare not miss. “This is the very last of the Nazi trials. I don’t think there will be more,” he says.
While there are other former Nazis still alive, it is doubtful there will be time to bring them to justice before the last passes away, which is why Hanning’s verdict has such historical significance.
“The world has to know what has happened,” says Glied. “I’d like to be able to say, ‘Don’t listen to me. Listen to a German court, a German court that says: ‘Here is a man who’s convicted of the crimes.’ ”
On Friday, Glied will face the former SS guard with his daughter and granddaughter by his side, the ultimate revenge against those who tried to annihilate his family and millions of other Jews.
“There’s going to be three generations there; we can say, ‘Hey, you didn’t win at the end. We’re here.’ ”
As am I. My paternal greatgrandparents were sent to Hitler’s ovens at Auschwitz. And so I arrive at the courthouse in this pretty town with ghosts of my own.
Glied and Bohm don’t recognize Hanning; none of the survivors do. Instead, they were called to explain to the court how SS officers were an integral part of an industrial complex of mass murder.
Throughout the trial, which sat for just a few hours once or twice a week because of his age, Hanning buried his chin in his chest, refusing to meet their eyes. Not when Bohm urged him to look up at her. Not when Glied spoke of seeing his mother and sister torn away without a moment to say goodbye.
“In my almost daily recurring thoughts, I see this piece of godforsaken earth — this ramp — as the worst piece of ground on Earth,” Glied told Hanning. “These heartless murderers decided with a flick of a finger who is to live and who is to die. No warrant, no document, no judge nor jury.”
Toward the end of his trial, the former Nazi broke his silence. He admitted being at Auschwitz and apologized for being a member of the SS, but denied overseeing any beatings or deaths. His lawyer demanded an acquittal, insisting Hanning had no direct involvement in any crime.
“He is a broken old man and not the one he may have been before the trial,” defence lawyer Johannes Salmen told the court.
He is broken? What of those left orphaned and scarred for the rest of their days?
“Try to imagine that one day when you’re a teenager, someone takes your mom and dad and murders them, holds you captive, starves you, demeans you, you are nothing, and they are the Almighty,” Bohm explains, fighting decades of tears.
“You work, you survive, you hope it’s going to be over one day, and it is, the war ends. But it’s never over. You try to make a life. You bury your memories, that’s the only way.”
At this last Nazi trial, what would she say to Hanning if given one final opportunity?
“I hope God will forgive you. I can’t.”