The POW who Broke INTO Auschwitz

In today's Times, there's a fascinating story about a British POW who traded places with a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz.

Avey was a troublesome prisoner. In the summer of 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz, in Poland, and interned in a small PoW camp on the periphery of the IG Farben factory. The main Jewish camps were several miles to the west. “I’d lost my liberty, but none of my spirit,” he says. “I was still determined to give as good as I got.”

But he knew immediately that this was a different order of prison. “The Stripeys — that’s what we called the Jewish prisoners — were in a terrible state. Within months they were reduced to waifs and then they disappeared. The stench from the crematoria was appalling, civilians from as far away as Katowice were complaining. Everybody knew what was going on. Everybody knew.”

Remarkably, Avey was able to think beyond the war. “I knew in my gut that these swine would eventually be held to account,” he says. “Evidence would be vital. Of course, sneaking into the Jewish camp was a ludicrous idea. It was like breaking into Hell. But that’s the sort of chap I was. Reckless.”

The Holocaust and Modern Day Genocide

Foreign Policy has an article by Andrew Stroehlein about what the Holocaust can't teach us about modern-day genocide.

I suspect too many people in the wider international community still only
recognize genocide in this one most specific sense. They are always looking for
Birkenau -- expecting industrialized killing rather than seeing genocide the way
it unfolds today. They ignore the evidence that in the right environment, simple
machetes can be just as effective as rail networks and gas chambers.

"Genocide" is too limiting a term in any case. In recent years,
governments have not necessarily been exterminating entire subgroups en masse
with crystal-clear intent. Yet some governments show no qualms about shelling
huge numbers of ethnic minority civilians trapped in confined war zones, as we
saw in Sri Lanka earlier this year. More common still are governments that kick
one ethnic group off its land and force the people into displacement camps where
they become permanent wards of international humanitarian agencies -- think
Darfur, for example, to mention just one place commonly labeled a "slow-motion
genocide."

Demjanjuk Arrives in Munich

John Demjanjuk, the retired autoworker/accused Nazi guard, arrived in Germany after being deported by the United States. He is 89 years old and in poor health; if he lives long enough and is deemed fit to stand trial, his guilt will be decided by a court in Munich.

Ultimately Mr. Demjanjuk’s advanced age and poor health serve as reminders, regardless of the outcome in court, of how the living memory of the crimes committed during World War II is on the verge of disappearing. Mr. Demjanjuk’s case might well be the last major war crimes trial in Germany, marking the end of an era that began in Nuremberg in 1945.

Thomas Blatt, 82, who was a prisoner at Sobibor at the same time Mr. Demjanjuk has been accused of having worked there as a guard, said the trial itself was more important than meting out any punishment. “I don’t care if he is released; I do care about his testimony,” said Mr. Blatt, who now lives in California and has written two books about his experiences. “There’s many people right now who say the Holocaust never happened.”

Reuters has collected some reactions here. (A previous post.)

6th Circuit Panel Denies Stay of Deportation to Alleged Nazi Guard

A 3-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals denied a stay of deportation to John Demjanjuk, an alleged Nazi death camp guard. An arrest warrant was issued in Munich and he faces 29,000 counts of accessory to murder.

The Demjanjuk saga spans decades and continents. The Wikipedia article provides a good overview of the chronology. The most recent issue was Demjanjuk's argument that because he is old and ill, deportation would constitute torture and would therefore be forbidden under the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment.