Isaac Fransman: born in Amsterdam July 23 1898, deceased 9 April 1943 in Sobibor; Rachel Fransman-Lochem: born in Amsterdam July 7 1900, April 9 1943 deceased in Sobibor.
By Hermione Gee, Amsterdam
“In all these years,” says Rob Fransman, “the names of my father and mother have never been mentioned in any courtroom. I’ve often said the Kaddish [but] I’ve never specifically said it for my parents. The way the judge read out the names this afternoon was a prayer. He said Kaddish for me. How ironic - a German judge in Munich.”
Fransman is one of 22 co-prosecutors at the trial of John Demjanjuk in Munich, Germany. They are all family members of people murdered at the Nazi death-camp in Sobibor, Poland, during World War II. Both of Fransman’s parents died at Sobibor.
Demjanjuk, 89, is charged with accessory to the murder of 29,700 Dutch Jews at Sobibor where he allegedly worked as a camp guard in 1943. |
What’s does it mean for you, to be in the courtroom and see Demjanjuk on trial?
I try to examine my own feelings. In the trial, my seat in the courtroom is less than 3 meters from the bed where he is laying. So if I stand up, I can touch him. I can do something to him. But I don’t have that urge at all. He’s not a symbol of evil for me. He’s John Demjanjuk, and he’s there, and he plays the role of victim now.
Why is this trial important?
First of all, I think, every war criminal should be prosecuted wherever, whenever is possible. Demjanjuk was not possible before 65 years, almost. That’s it. The punishment is a matter of unimportance for someone 89 years old. But that the trial is there and that criminals know that whatever happens they cannot hide, I think is very important.
Demjanjuk, in a strange, ironic way, does us a favour because he gives us a voice. And a face.
For me, personally, the Shoah is a thing of big numbers. It’s always 6 million. It’s never about a person. But it’s 6 million stories. And nobody has the patience or the stomach to hear 6 million stories. But especially where the Holocaust is denied all the time, is this trial so important. Our voice is heard, and that’s the main thing of this trial.
In killings of these magnitudes, there’s no such thing as small people or, “we did it on command of somebody else”. I strongly believe in your own responsibility, and if you let yourself be told by somebody else you have to kill somebody, whatever you tell yourself, it’s your own responsibility.
What do you hope to see come out of the trial?
I hope he stays alive until the end of the trial. Secondly, yes, I hope he gets convicted.
I am very glad that we have the opportunity once again, and for the last time to put the Holocaust on the map, to give it a face and a name, and of course if you’re on that side of the trial, you want a conviction. The punishment is completely irrelevant. He will spend the rest of his life in hospital. Either there will be bars in front of the windows or there won’t be – there’s no difference.
How did you feel when the Israeli court acquitted him in 1999?
I was glad. It showed the justice of the Israeli system. It was a triumph, after so many blunders. It would have been so easy to kill [him]. So easy. No, the court said, it’s not sure that he was in Treblinka. He might not have been there. There wasn’t absolute certainty that he was in Treblinka. So that was fantastic. Revenge is for them. Not for us. It’s below our dignity.
In many ways, the Nazi trials after World War II are the foundations on which our modern international criminal justice system rests.
What do you make of today’s international courts?
The ICC is for our conscience. Look what we do! What they do [at the gacaca courts] in Rwanda is an example for the whole world. It’s much better than a court in the Hague, of all places.
Just get yourself in the shoes of an orphan in Rwanda, in Somalia, wherever. Somebody in a country, all the way in Europe, in the snow, is going to judge what happened in Africa?
It doesn’t mean a damn to the victims there. So, we put someone in jail. Rightfully, ok, of course we should do that. But it’s for us. Not for them.
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Also, look closely at the ID card provided by the KGB - an organization that has killed over 10 million Ukrainians.
Notice the staple holes in the picture - the problem is that there are no staple holes in the ID card but there are two different glues.
Also, notice the white placard on his chest with the ID number.
What's that? You cant see the ID number?
Well that proves that the ID card supplied by the KGB is a fraud as the Nazis would never have provided such a document. A guard carrying such an obvious forgery would have been shot on the spot.
Yes, Israeli justice was complete - they even heard charges that Demjanjuk was a guard at Sobibor.
They heard testimony from numerous Sobibor survivors.
However, they all said that Demjanjuk was never at Sobibor, including one inmate who was assigned to the guards barracks. This man knew all the guards and he said Demjanjuk was not a guard at Sobibor.
I am glad you believe that all genocidal murders should be brought to trial.
The question is, why after 75 years have we not brought one communist to trial for the murder of 10 million of Demjanjuk's countrymen?
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