Blessed are the Nazi Hunters: Johann Rehbogen stands trial
You can’t see Johann Rehbogen’s face. The German judicial authorities say the former SS guard’s face must be pixelated. Given the passing of time, the trial of Johann Rehbogen promises to be one of Germany’s final Holocaust trials. He’s 94. And depending on your view that means he’s an old man who should be left alone, or a man accused of one of the worst crimes in human history who lived free and protected by others for decades. Blessed is the man who lives to see his children grow old.
And cursed is his soul if you believe in that sort of thing and know that Johann Rehbogen is accused of being an accessory to the murders of at least 300 Jews, Russian prisoners and political dissidents at the Stutthof camp near Gdansk. The victims were killed by toxic injections to the heart, poison gas, the hangman’s rope, electrocution and the result of being ordered to stand naked outdoors. Mr Rehbogen was at the camp from 1942 to 1944. He was born in Romania. He joined the SS at age 18. He denies all wrongdoing. He says he was unaware of the killings and did not participate in them.
The Times:
There were more than 29,000 deaths — and possibly as many as 65,000 — at the camp over the course of the Second World War. When the Red Army captured Stutthof in May 1945, its soldiers discovered a laboratory where Nazis experimented on corpses. Mr Rehbogen seemed to weep silently as lawyers representing Holocaust survivors and relatives of the dead recounted their suffering in the camp. Some criticised the Germany for having taken more than seven decades to bring the guard to justice. One said it was “too little, too late”. The defendant spoke only to confirm his identity. His lawyers said he would make no plea until they received an expert opinion on procedures of the camp from a historian.
Ah, the banality of alleged evil:
After the war he completed a PhD in business management and taught landscape gardening. He is divorced with three adult children. He has admitted working at the camp but repeatedly denied knowledge of the executions.\
Why are old Nazis hunted? Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 1908 – 20 September 2005) explained in The Murderers Among Us: “But I, even before having had time to meditate carefully, understood that we should not forget, if we all forgot, the same thing could happen again after twenty, fifty or a hundred years.”
Never forget. And fight. Never stop fighting:
“When the Germans first came to my city in Galicia, half the population was Jewish: one hundred fifty thousand Jews. When the Germans were gone, five hundred were alive. … Many times I was thinking that everything in life has a price, so to stay alive must also have a price. And my price was always that, if I lived, I must be deputy for many people who are not alive.”
Image: The Holocaust memorial in Berlin, Germany, Monday, Aug. 13, 2012. The memorial to the 6 million Jews killed in Europe under the Nazis was created by U.S. architect Peter Eisenman and consists of an undulating field of 2,711 steles through which visitors can wander. (AP Photo)
Posted: 7th, November 2018 | In: Key Posts, News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
