A 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard went on trial in Germany Thursday accused of being an accessory to the murder of 170,000 people at the former death camp. World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder said it was important that these trials were taking place despite the age of the accused.
Former SS officer Reinhold Hanning maintains that he served in a part of Auschwitz where no gassings were taking place and claims he did not take part in the killing of any people. As the charges were read out, he did not say a word.
Prosecutors argue that all guards helped the camp function, and that during the so-called "Hungarian action" in 1944, when hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, almost SS officers present were called upon to help send them to the gas chambers or into slave labor.
The trial in Detmold was moved to the city's chamber of industry and commerce to accommodate the large number of observers and reporters. There was also a heavy police presence in the city.
Leon Schwarzbaum, a 94-year-old Auschwitz survivor from Berlin, who was taken to the camp in 1943, lost 35 family members during the Holocaust recalled the camp's horrors. When he finished, he directly addressed the accused, Reinhold Hanning, also 94, on the first day of his trial.
"I want to know why millions of Jews were killed and here we both are," Schwarzbaum said. "Soon we will both stand in front of the highest judge - tell everyone here what happened, the way I've done just now!" Hanning avoided eye contact throughout, showing no reaction to Schwarzbaum's account.
Hanning's attorney, Johannes Salmen, told AP before the trial opened that his client acknowledged serving at the Auschwitz I complex, but denied serving at Birkenau (Auschwitz II), where most of the 1.1 million victims were killed. Prosecutor Andreas Brendel told the AP, however, that guards in the main camp were also used as on-call guards to augment those in Birkenau when trainloads of Jews were brought in. "We believe that these auxiliaries were used in particular during the so-called Hungarian action in support of Birkenau," he said.
Lauder: "Survivors' wounds are still fresh"
World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder declared in statement: “I believe Germany has an obligation to put anybody suspected of abetting or aiding in the biggest mass murder in history on trial, irrespective of their age. Holocaust survivors rightly expect that no stone is left unturned when it comes to shedding light onto this dark chapter, and many of them are willing to testify in these trials.
"It’s critical that the law is applied rigorously. There is no statute of limitation for mass murder, and there shouldn’t be.
“Thousands of SS members participated in the murder of more than 1.1 million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Of course, the ones that are still alive pretend that they didn’t know what was going on there, that they didn’t take part in any killings, and so on. That’s not credible.
"Even 71 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the wounds of the survivors are still fresh. Many of them are haunted every single day by the horrible experiences they and their family members went through. At the same time, there are still a few old men out there with blood of on their hands. For seven decades, they did not have to answer for their crimes. They were able to lead peaceful lives.
"Seventy years ago, the Nuremberg Trials of senior Nazis were held, and the world learnt about what had happened. One of the lessons is that there must not be impunity for genocide, for mass murder, for crimes against humanity. In these cases, old age is not a mitigating factor.
"It’s important that the truth is revealed, that the suspects are tried in court. The Demjanjuk and Gröning trials have shown that it’s too early to speak of closure, and that some of the perpetrators of the Holocaust have still not been brought to justice. If anyone deemed responsible for any aspect of the Holocaust is still able to stand trial, he or she should be prosecuted. As long as it’s possible to bring any of them to justice, it must be done," Lauder said.
