Useful Enemies

army or the Waffen SS.

There were also thousands who stood by and watched the brutal murder of civilians. A German colonel stationed in Kaunas, Lithuania, for example, was passing by a crowd that was jeering, clapping, and shouting “Bravo!” He saw mothers raising their small children over their heads so they could watch whatever was going on. Curious, the officer stopped to investigate.

“On the concrete courtyard,” he later wrote, “there was a blonde man aged around twenty-five, of medium height. He was taking a rest and supporting himself on a wooden club which was as thick as an arm and went up to his chest. At his feet lay fifteen, twenty people who were dead or dying. Water poured from a hose and washed their blood into a drain.

“Just a few paces behind this man stood around twenty men who—guarded by several armed civilians— awaited their gruesome execution in silent submission. Beckoned with a curt wave, the next one stepped up silently and was… beaten to death with the wooden club, and every blow met with enthusiastic cheers from the audience.”

When all the victims were dead, the executioner climbed on the heap of corpses and began playing the Lithuanian national anthem on an accordion. The crowd broke into patriotic song.

Is watching the murder of civilians and doing nothing about it working with the Nazis?

Is cheering and egging on the murderer of Jews working with the Nazis?

Is jeering and spitting on the prisoners marching through the village of Dachau to the SS concentration camp located there working with the Nazis?

Working with the Nazis prompts its own distinction: criminal or noncriminal? Dieter Pohl, a historian at the German Institute for Contemporary History, estimated that more than two hundred thousand non-Germans committed war crimes while working with the Nazis. Shooting a Jew is clearly a collaboration crime. But what about:

Denouncing a Jew either gratis or for a kilo of sugar?

Looting the homes of Jews after they have been murdered?

Guarding a factory as a Trawniki man?

Guarding a Nazi labor camp as a Trawniki man without specifically killing a prisoner?

There are many reasons why Europeans worked with the Nazis. They include force, blackmail, greed, or revenge; fear of being killed if one refused; fear of starvation or losing one’s job; the need to feed and protect one’s family; an opportunity to improve or advance one’s career; a chance to buy a better lifestyle; and an opportunity to murder one’s ideological and religious enemies—communists, Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Orthodox Serbs—without being punished for the crime.

Motivation for working with the Nazis prompts another distinction: voluntary or involuntary. That distinction asks the question: Under what circumstances in wartime is it morally permissible to voluntarily work for the Nazis?

Involuntary collaboration is frequently a simple black-and-white issue. The Nazis conscripted non-German civilians of occupied countries into the Waffen SS. They were never asked, “Would you like to help us kill Soviet soldiers?” At the death camps, worker Jews were not asked, “Would you like to cut the hair of the girls and women about to die in the gas chambers?” The eighty non-German guards transferred from Trawniki to Sobibor were not asked, “Would you like to work in a death camp?”

Voluntary collaboration is more problematic. What is a morally acceptable reason to voluntarily collaborate with the Nazis? To avoid being shot? To avoid starving to death? To protect one’s family from retaliation if one refuses? Out of a need for a paying job to feed one’s family?

Where is the moral line in wartime?

When a new prisoner arrives at a death camp and volunteers to work with the Nazis as a tailor, blacksmith, shoemaker, or knitter, is he or she really volunteering?

When a Soviet POW voluntarily agrees to work with the Nazis in an unspecified job, is he really volunteering?

Where one draws the moral line suggests another distinction: life or death. If a Jew standing in the selection line at a death camp does not volunteer to make boots for the SS men at the camp, he will die. Is his “voluntary” decision under those circumstances really involuntary? Is the law of survival higher than the moral law that forbids working for an enemy who commits crimes against humanity?

If a Soviet POW does not agree to work for the Nazis in an unspecified job, he faces a high probability of either being executed for refusing or of eventually dying from starvation, overwork, or disease. Unlike the death camp prisoner who will certainly be killed if he refuses to work for or with the Nazis, the POW does not face certain death. Is he morally justified in working for the Nazis in order to increase his chances of survival?

If a German soldier or a civilian volunteer is ordered to shoot Jews lined up in front of a ditch in a forest in Estonia, he could be executed on the spot for refusing to follow orders. He faces a personal life-or-death decision. Is he morally obligated to be killed rather than to kill? Is it murder to kill someone when the alternative is death for oneself? Is the decision to choose to disobey the order an act of morality or an act of heroism?

If a death camp SS man is ordered by a superior officer to kill a sick old man at the “infirmary” and refuses, is it clear that he will be executed by his SS commander? Is it a life-or-death decision? If it’s not clear, is he morally obligated to take the risk and refuse to obey the order?

There were thousands of Nazis and those who worked for them who never personally killed a civilian. Are they war criminals? That question leads to still another distinction clearly defined in the 1871 German criminal code: specific hands-on crime or unspecific abetted crime.

A civilian denounces a Jew. The Jew is executed. The denouncer did not pull the trigger. He was a voluntary collaborator in the process of killing a Jew without specifically killing him. Is he guilty of a crime? What if he did not know the Jew would be killed? What if he believed the Jew would be sent to a work camp in the east?

A camp commandant like Trawniki boss Karl Streibel never killed a Jew. All he did was train the men who did. He played a major role in the process of killing without specifically killing. Is he guilty of a crime?

A death camp Trawniki man stands in a guard tower. His job is to prevent escapes. There are no escapes, so he doesn’t shoot anyone. He is part of the killing process without specifically killing someone. Is he guilty of a crime?

An SS officer works in the death camp office. He has a pistol that he never uses. He is never ordered to drive Jews into a gas chamber. He is never ordered to shoot the old and the sick at the “Infirmary.” He is part of the killing process because he helps administer the death camp. Is he guilty of a crime?

Assuming John Demjanjuk trained at Trawniki and served at Sobibor, he may have volunteered to drive a truck for the Nazis without knowing what it would carry. He did not volunteer to be trained at the Trawniki school. He did not request a job at Sobibor. Once at Sobibor, he did not choose which jobs he would and would not do. The SS could order him to perform any of the grim tasks at a death camp:

• Guarding the perimeter or the worker Jews inside the camp or those who worked in Kommandos outside the camp; unloading the new arrivals from boxcars.

• Keeping order at the unloading dock to prevent a revolt; making sure the new arrivals undressed and that the girls and women had their hair shorn.

• Leading or driving the victims up to and then into the gas chambers.

• Supervising the burial or cremation of the corpses and the extraction of gold teeth.

• Shooting or prodding resisters.

• Killing the old and the sick at the “Infirmary.”

If John Demjanjuk never specifically killed or severely brutalized anyone at Sobibor but was only a cog in the killing process, did he commit a war crime or a crime against humanity under German law?

• • •

On May 12, 2011, the Munich court issued its ruling. The court found that:

• Without a doubt, John Demjanjuk served as an SS guard at the Sobibor death camp from March 1943 to