“Were you shown another set of photographs?”
“Yes.”
“When you looked at those photographs… where was the first [set]?”
“They had been removed,” Horn said.
“How many photos were in that set?”
“Also about eight.”
“Did anyone suggest to you that you identify or pick a particular photograph?” Moscowitz asked.
“No.”
“In this group, did you recognize the photograph of any person?”
“Yes. The one I found out on the first set,” Horn said.
“And what was his name?”
“Iwan.”
“The Iwan whom you stated was at the gas chamber?”
“Yes.”
“Where
“Inside.”
“What was he doing?”
“He directed, or he co-directed, the prisoners into the chambers,” Horn said.
“Did there come a time when you saw him at any other part of the gas chamber?”
“At the place where the engines were.”
“These are the engines of the gas chamber?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see Iwan go into this room where the motors were?”
“Yes.”
“What if anything did you see him do there?”
“I didn’t go in there,” Horn said. “I only saw him
Moscowitz then approached the issue in another way.
“What would happen in the gas chambers after… Iwan entered that motor room?” he asked.
“Objection.”
The answer called for speculation. How could Horn possibly know what happened inside the motor building if he wasn’t present?
“Overruled.”
“They certainly turned on the engines and gassed the people,” Horn said.
“How long would the process of gassing last?”
“Perhaps an hour.”
“And what if anything happened after that hour was over?”
“The chambers were opened,” Horn said.
“And what happened then?”
“The corpses were carried away into the pit… for burning.”
Anticipating that the defense would attempt to characterize Horn as an unsavory war criminal, Moscowitz asked: “Mr. Horn, were you tried in court for your activities at Treblinka?”
“At Dusseldorf… 1964–1965,” Horn admitted.
“And what was the verdict?”
“I was acquitted.”
“Completely?”
“Entirely,” Horn said.
Horn was the only German found not guilty in the Treblinka war crimes trial in Dusseldorf. The court did not believe that supervising the burying of the corpses of Jews murdered in gas chambers, while he stood by and watched, was a crime against humanity.
Moscowitz scored two big points. Horn had identified Iwan as the Ukrainian guard who herded victims into the gas chambers and who was inside the motor room when the gassing took place. He had not actually seen Iwan start the motor, however, or direct the gas to the chambers. Second, he had positively identified John Demjanjuk as Iwan from two photos in two correctly presented spreads.
However valuable Horn was to the prosecution, he was far from a sympathetic witness. He had described the killing process at Treblinka in cold, unemotional terms as if he were describing cattle rather than people. And he tried to portray himself as innocent of all wrongdoing as a euthanasia project worker and as a Treblinka guard who supervised the gruesome burying and burning of hundreds of thousands of corpses of men, women, and children.
Martin’s job was to destroy Horn’s credibility by characterizing him as a war criminal and, therefore, not trustworthy. As a nurse, Horn had worked in T-4, Himmler’s secret euthanasia program, designed to rid Germany of the elderly, chronically sick, and mentally handicapped. Himmler didn’t consider them good Aryan specimens and their care cost too much. Its name was an abbreviation for Tiergartenstrasse 4, the address of the project headquarters in Berlin. T-4 murdered more than two hundred thousand people before religious and public pressure forced the Nazis to discontinue the program.
“Were you part of the T-4 organization?” Martin asked.
“No.”
“Yet you worked in their offices in Berlin?”
“Yes.”
“And you worked at their euthanasia
“Yes.”
“You had to take charge of urns?”
“Yes.”
“Were these the remains of the children that were gassed and burned?”
“There were no children gassed there,” Horn said. “These were adults, mentally ill adults…. The urns were empty.”
Horn went on to claim that the SS was no longer euthanizing people when it drafted him. The claim sounded self-serving and Martin ended his T-4 cross-examination on that note. He asked Horn what he did at Treblinka.
Horn said he supervised Jewish workers.
“What were your duties in supervising the Jews?” Martin asked.
“They were burning corpses and shoveling earth into pits,” Horn said.
“Did you ever see this person you describe as Iwan commit any atrocities, do anything other than hang around the gas chamber?” Martin asked.
“No, I didn’t.”
Once again, the answer did not appear honest. Every witness to follow Horn would describe the atrocities Iwan committed right under Horn’s nose.
“How old was this man that you remember as being Iwan?”
“About twenty-four, twenty-five.”
“What color was his hair?”
“Dark to black.”
“How tall was he?”
“Approximately 180 centimeters [about six feet].”
“How much did this person weigh?”
“Seventy-five to eighty kilograms [about 165–75 pounds].”
“What kind of uniform did he have?”
“I think a black one.”
Martin scored three solid points. First, Horn was more than a simple bystander to Nazi atrocities and, therefore, his testimony was tainted. Second, if Horn could be believed, Iwan was not a monster as the Treblinka survivors would later describe him, casting some doubt on their credibility. And third, the Iwan whom Horn knew at
