Demjanjuk Convicted for Role in Nazi Death Camp

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by CCIP

I don't doubt that circumstances may well have weighed heavily on Demjanjuk's choice to enlist rather than share the fate of millions of Soviet POWs executed in the very camps. However no matter how hard, it was still a choice, and one doesn't simply end up in that very specific type of SS unit by circumstances alone. So the fact is, there are repercussions to any choice one consciously makes. And he has to face up to them just like everyone else.

Well said.
The extraordinary circumstances weighted certainly into the judge's decision as they were the main argument of the defence.
One should not forget that these guards were also victims to a certain degree - following the same logic like many rapists were often previously raped before.
For example, after the beginning of Barbarossa, this official doctrine was ordered: "Nichtarbeitende Kriegsgefangene in den Gefangenenlagern haben zu verhungern." (Non working prisoners of war in the prison camps have to starve.) Ordered by General Eduard Wagner, general quartermaster of the army in October 1941.
An inhumane system creates inhumane people. So often the guards or kapos were even more gruesome and brutal than their German Herrenmenschen superiours. The best known example of victims who victimize their own is certainly the jewish police in the ghettos.

And here comes the part of everybody's own conscience into.
It is your own decision to look sometimes the other way, to hand over a cigarette or just some informations about the outside world. Nobody expects them to be gun-waving Arnolds who free the prisoners on their own. Just these little signs of humanity which I mentioned could make a difference. That's what I mean with the thousands of shades of gray.
Sadly, in reality, it was in most cases more successfull for the prisoners to bribe a guard than to appeal to his conscience. The tales of brutal behaviour of the guards are much frequent than reports of humanity.

Just from a legal point of view, it was officially forbidden to do harm to civilians and POWs for German soldiers, so atrocities would have also been theoretically punishable under the laws of Nazi Germany. However I doubt that the so called "Trawnikis", of which Dumjanjek was a part of, ever got issued any codes of conduct.

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Very good points. I was kind of wishy washy on my feelings on this when I first heard about this event. You've convinced me.

It's the sign of a thinking mind to be able to rethink his own positions and not stick to a prefab opinion!