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THE LAST NAZI TRIAL?
Newsweek Nov. 26, 1979 For four hours last week in a hushed Cologne courtroom, Judge Heinz Fassbender read aloud the dry, bureaucratic language of genocide. As the judge calmly worked through a 3-inch pile of documents detailing the Nazi deportation of Jews to death camps, one routine letter to the Amsterdam SS office finally seemed too much for him. The order from the chief of the Nazi police in occupied Paris read, in part:". ..there will be uniform use of the Jewish star with the inscription 'Jew' in the respective language of the country (two languages in Belgium)." Judge Fassbender raised an eyebrow, glanced down at the author of the directive, and observed, "One really thinks of everything, doesn't one?" Kurt Lischka didn't answer. Lischka, a 70-year-old retired clerk, is the central character in what appears to be West Germany's last major trial for wartime atrocities. Along with Herbert Hagen, the Nazi police chief in Bordeaux, and Ernst Heinrichsohn, a Gestapo officer in France, Lischka is charged with helping murder 73,000 Jews shipped from France to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. German officials are confident of convicting these three. But because both potential witnesses and defendants are so old, authorities consider other important Nazi trials unlikely. "Small proceedings are in the works, but we foresee nothing of this magnitude," says Alfred Streim, state prosecutor for Nazi war crimes. Despite their well-documented past, the Cologne defendants nearly avoided prosecution. All three have lived openly in Germany since the war—Heinrichsohn is the mayor of a Bavarian hamlet—protected by tragic loopholes in the law. After World War II, the Permanent Tribunal of the Armed Forces in Paris tried many Nazis, including the Cologne three, in absentia. All were convicted but the postwar West German constitution prohibits extradition of any citizens, including known Nazis. At the same time, the Allies barred retrials in Germany of Nazis convicted elsewhere. A 1971 treaty between France and Germany ended the ban on retrials, but the Bundestag didn't ratify it for four years. So the three Nazis remained free, until Serge Klarsfeld, the son of a French Jew killed in Auschwitz, orchestrated a series of public incidents embarrassing both them and the authorities. demonstrations: Klarsfeld and his non-Jewish German wife, Beate, have tracked down Nazis for twelve years. In 1968, Beate publicly slapped Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger in the face while screaming "Nazi, Nazi." Kiesinger, once a propaganda official in Hitler's Foreign Ministry, was defeated in the next national election by Willy Brandt, an anti-Nazi resistance hero. The Klarsfelds then focused their efforts on bringing Nazis to justice in Germany, and Lischka topped their list. Once the Klarsfelds attempted to kidnap Lischka, and another time Serge walked up to Lischka, and symbolically held a gun to his head before strolling away. Only after the Klarsfelds organized demonstrations outside Heinrichsohn's law office last year did German prosecutors indict the three. At the current trial, Serge serves as a Nebenklaeger, or consultant, assisting the prosecutor. "This is the closing of an era," Klarsfeld says. "This case is the most important to my heart and I am here to hear a guilty verdict." The prosecution's case rests almost entirely on documents which link the defendants to the Jewish deportations and to senior Nazi officials directing the death program. For instance, records indicate that Hagen befriended Adolf Eichmann in the late '30s and traveled with him to Palestine in 1937. (Hagen later returned as a tourist to the new state of Israel.) The chief of the Gestapo in France served as a witness at Hagen's marriage in 1943. Later, his superiors recommended promoting Hagen for being tough and systematic. The defense concedes that the three men did transport Jews to the camps but claims that they had no idea about what happened there. Other defendants have failed with a similar argument. At one point in this trial, Judge Fassbender asked Hagen if his intelligence work, which included listening to foreign radio, had not conveyed the fate of the Jews. Hagen replied that he could not talk about intelligence activities without official authorization. "What should we do," interrupted special prosecutor Friedrich Kaul, "ask Herr Hitler for his permission?" 'anti-jews': German judges serve as the chief interrogators during criminal trials. Lischka's lawyer announced last week, however, that his client would not submit to questioning. This was his right, but the tactic surprised some lawyers. "It's as good as admitting guilt not to sit before the judge," said a German trial lawyer. So Judge Fassbender began reading the documents, including one letter Lischka wrote to the German Embassy in Paris explaining that if he released one particular Jew, "the French would think that with the exception of the Fuhrer there aren't any other anti-Jews among the Germans." The Cologne trial has caused relatively little stir in Germany, where Nazi trials are uncomfortably familiar. On the first day of the trial, 250 young French Jews demon- |
