Greville Janner: John Demjanjuk trial: we mustn't draw a line under crimes of the Holocaust
[Lord Janner is Chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust and a former war crimes investigator]
The trial of John Demjanjuk, a man accused of assisting in the murder of 27,900 people in Poland during 1943, has provoked mixed feelings. “Let the past rest,” some murmur as his frail figure is wheeled into the Munich courtroom. An argument that the passage of time should oblige us to draw a line under crimes of the Holocaust has won some traction, but I consider it a perverse one.
Above all, the glib suggestion that we should leave those accused of war crimes in peace because of their age or poor health is an affront to the Holocaust Survivors, who continue to live with the suffering inflicted upon them. It is an insult to the millions of men, women and children who were murdered by Hitler’s regime: Jews, Roma and gypsies and other persecuted minorities. It dismisses the devastation of an entire generation as a mere historical footnote, an unwelcome reminder of a more brutal time. It denies the imperative of all civillised peoples to pursue not revenge, but justice. Time must never be a barrier to justice.
In 1947, I became the youngest War Crimes Investigator in the British Army of the Rhine, charged with helping to track down and arrest individuals who had perpetrated evils almost beyond imagination. A year later, in 1948, the War Crimes Group was disbanded. I felt ashamed of our Government for denying the importance of pursuing justice, an anger that has never left me. On weekends, I worked with Holocaust Survivors at Bergen-Belsen. It was that experience that forged the conviction in me that still burns in me today, that for the sake of our own society, we cannot afford to forget what happened in the concentration and extermination camps of Europe. It is why I fought for a War Crimes Act in our UK Parliament and that is why the late Lord Merlyn Rees and I formed the Holocaust Educational Trust, to ensure that future generations understand clearly where the politics of hatred ultimately lead.
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
The trial of John Demjanjuk, a man accused of assisting in the murder of 27,900 people in Poland during 1943, has provoked mixed feelings. “Let the past rest,” some murmur as his frail figure is wheeled into the Munich courtroom. An argument that the passage of time should oblige us to draw a line under crimes of the Holocaust has won some traction, but I consider it a perverse one.
Above all, the glib suggestion that we should leave those accused of war crimes in peace because of their age or poor health is an affront to the Holocaust Survivors, who continue to live with the suffering inflicted upon them. It is an insult to the millions of men, women and children who were murdered by Hitler’s regime: Jews, Roma and gypsies and other persecuted minorities. It dismisses the devastation of an entire generation as a mere historical footnote, an unwelcome reminder of a more brutal time. It denies the imperative of all civillised peoples to pursue not revenge, but justice. Time must never be a barrier to justice.
In 1947, I became the youngest War Crimes Investigator in the British Army of the Rhine, charged with helping to track down and arrest individuals who had perpetrated evils almost beyond imagination. A year later, in 1948, the War Crimes Group was disbanded. I felt ashamed of our Government for denying the importance of pursuing justice, an anger that has never left me. On weekends, I worked with Holocaust Survivors at Bergen-Belsen. It was that experience that forged the conviction in me that still burns in me today, that for the sake of our own society, we cannot afford to forget what happened in the concentration and extermination camps of Europe. It is why I fought for a War Crimes Act in our UK Parliament and that is why the late Lord Merlyn Rees and I formed the Holocaust Educational Trust, to ensure that future generations understand clearly where the politics of hatred ultimately lead.