Useful Enemies

prison camp during World War II—but there was no SS guard revolt. In fact, SS guards shot and killed as many escaping Jews as they could during their uprising.

Sobibor survivors argue that Iwan Demjanjuk chose to stay at Sobibor because life there was cushier and safer than life in the forest.

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Those who followed the Munich trial closely have concluded that John Demjanjuk didn’t have a chance for acquittal. His court-appointed attorney didn’t enjoy a fat defense wallet or an army of researchers at his elbow. He worked diligently, argued even harder, but managed to irritate, if not alienate, the panel of judges with groundless motions to kill or delay the proceedings. His aggressive attitude toward the bench got to associate judge Thomas Lenz during a court session one day.

“You don’t have to sneer at me,” Lenz yelled at Busch. “Stop doing that.”

An analysis of the body language of bored judges, the questions they asked Busch and the defense witnesses, and the constant rejection of defense motions—presiding judge Alt had as many as twelve sitting on his desk at any given time—signaled that the judges were not buying the repetitious arguments of the defense. They appeared to be saying: Who are you trying to kid, Herr Busch? He was at Sobibor.

German trial observer and reporter Gisela Friedrichsen described Busch in unflattering but fair terms. “One doesn’t need to like attorney Busch as a person,” she wrote in Der Spiegel. “One can criticize him for his constant use of abstruse, refuted or unproven arguments. Or for his fruitless motions for rejects, for stay of proceedings or for relief, and his haphazard applications to produce evidence, which numbers in the hundreds and only wasted time. Or his uncontrolled outbursts against the presiding judge Ralph Alt, which truly made his job difficult, as well as against the joint plaintiffs and even against the families of the victims.

“But given the plethora of documents that attest to the detailed record-keeping of the extermination machinery and his client’s proximity to that machinery, Busch defended Demjanjuk with his back to the wall. He knew that it was a hopeless case, but he fought nevertheless.

“He should not have to apologize for this.”

Given the court’s assumption that John Demjanjuk was at Sobibor, would the judges acquit him under the statutes of the criminal code of 1871? Or would the court set a precedent and convict him of accessory to murder? If it did convict him, was the German court making John Demjanjuk a scapegoat for sixty years of guilt and selective justice?

The answer to those questions depended on how the panel of seven judges defined the ambiguous word “collaborator.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN Who Is a Collaborator?

Who is a Nazi collaborator is such a delicate question in the context of the Holocaust that resistance to examining it and its horrendous implications is fierce and emotional. As a result, the question is so neglected that there isn’t a nuanced vocabulary to describe it, as there is for the action of killing.

In both popular and legal language, killing can include, among other things: voluntary or involuntary manslaughter, first-degree or second-degree murder, negligent homicide, accidental death, malpractice, suicide, self-defense, capital punishment, and a soldier’s wartime duty. If a man collaborates with an enemy who commits war crimes, however, he is simply a “collaborator.”

At the risk of offending Holocaust survivors and their families, it is important to understand and define who is a collaborator in the context of World War II in order to establish a framework of reference for the German trial of John Demjanjuk as SS guard Iwan of Sobibor.

Collaboration is a neutral word. It means to work with someone to accomplish a mutually agreed-upon end. In the context of World War II, however, the word collaboration has taken on a pejorative meaning—to help an enemy who is engaged in crimes against humanity. Directly or indirectly by association, the collaborator is, or is perceived as, a contributor to the crime of the enemy.

Such an interpretation of collaboration is too broad to be meaningful or useful. Under that definition, tens of millions of Europeans were guilty of collaborating with the occupying Nazi enemy, in every European country from France in the west to Lithuania in the east.

One of the first politicians to use the term collaboration in the context of World War II was Marshal Philippe Petain, who set up the Vichy regime in France in July 1940. Petain proclaimed collaboration with Germany in implementing its genocidal goals as the foundation of the new Vichy government. Other regimes in German-occupied countries like Croatia and Belorussia, to name just two, also founded their governance on similar collaboration with Germany.

The Nazi occupation of a country presented the citizens of that country with five survival options: flee to another country, sit tight and wait it out, resist the occupiers and their puppet governments, work for the occupiers and their puppet governments, or work with them.

Flight was not always possible. When it was, it frequently meant jumping from the fire into the frying pan. Sit tight and wait was a more practical option. But to sit tight and survive frequently necessitated compromises like remaining silent in the face of brutality, robbery, and murder, or looking the other way.

The resistance option was a heroic choice that went beyond the dictates of wartime morality. If a civilian chose to resist the enemy at the risk of his own life and the lives of his family, he could do it in a guerilla or partisan movement like the French Resistance, many of whose fighters ended up at Camp Dora. Or a civilian could resist in smaller, less visible ways while trying to survive and protect his family, as thousands did. He could secretly hide a resistance fighter, tend his wounds, feed her, supply him with tactical information, or warn her of danger. He could assist a downed Allied flier, as many did. All these actions were done at great risk. All went beyond the dictates of wartime morality.

The last two survival options, working for the enemy and working with the enemy, suggest distinctions within the meaning of the term “wartime collaboration.” These distinctions encompass an array of blacks and whites and disturbing shades of gray.

Hundreds of thousands of Europeans worked for the Nazis without necessarily working with them to implement their goals. The word for implies a paying job such as cooking for the Nazi occupiers, minding their children, tending their gardens, washing their cars, cleaning the villas they had confiscated for themselves, becoming their girlfriends for jam and nylons, dancing and singing for them, typing their letters, translating their documents, and interpreting for them.

After the war, many who worked for the Nazis were stigmatized as Nazi collaborators. They were frequently shunned and suffered discrimination if they chose to remain in the town where they were known and recognized, unless everyone else in the town had done the same thing.

Is cooking for the Nazis collaboration?

Is washing the car of a Nazi officer collaboration? What if the car were used in a roundup of Jews destined for Auschwitz?

Is typing for the Nazis collaboration? What if the secretarial job is in a Gestapo office?

Is translating documents for the Nazis collaboration? What if the document being translated is a list of men, women, and children targeted for roundup and execution?

At the other end of the collaboration spectrum, hundreds of thousands of Europeans in both the west and the east crossed a moral divide and worked with the Nazi occupiers. They denounced Jews, Gypsies, resistance fighters, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other Nazi enemies. As paid spies, they infiltrated organizations hostile to the Nazis. They joined Nazi-controlled police forces. They volunteered as Einsatzkommandos. They helped the Germans round up Jews and other civilians. They murdered civilians. They guarded concentration, work, and death camps. They helped gas Jews. They voluntarily joined the German regular