FACES AND PLACES: Israeli justice and a show trial (01/21/96)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Israeli justice and a show trial

If and when Yoram Sheftel's book "The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show Trial" becomes available in North America, Ukrainians with high blood pressure are forewarned. Reading the book could be hazardous to your health.

It's impossible to review this monumental book in one short article, so I plan to write about it more than once. This first article is devoted to the nature of the trial proceedings.

Throughout the trial and the subsequent appeal, the Demjanjuk defense sought justice for Mr. Demjanjuk. As a Jew and an Israeli, Mr. Sheftel was willing to admit to all the facts of the encyclopedia-like indictment, "apart from the facts that pertain to the question of the identity of Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible." All of the details of the Holocaust and the Treblinka death camp were simply not relevant to the question of Mr. Demjanjuk's guilt or innocence.

It soon became clear, however, that the intention of the three judges, especially Dov Levin, the lone Supreme Court justice on the panel, was to orchestrate a showtrial. The judge, writes Mr. Sheftel, declared "that the court had no judicial knowledge about the Holocaust, and it would therefore be necessary to prove every detail of this matter. Any first-year student of the laws of evidence," concluded Mr. Sheftel, "would have been astonished by these words, yet no one in Israel's legal community found the courage to speak out. It is not proper for the prosecution," after the defense had "admitted 99 percent of the facts," objected Mr. Sheftel, "to continue proving facts as if this admission had not been made."

That the entire exercise was a judicial scam was demonstrated in Chapter 19 of the verdict, which bears the title "Memorial." The final paragraph reads: "We will, in our judgement make, according to the entirety of the evidence before us, a memorial to the souls of the holy communities that have been lost and which are no more, to those who were annihilated and who were not brought to a Jewish grave, because no remnant nor survivor of them remains. To those who were thrown to the flames and whose children are dust and ashes fertilizing the fields of Poland, from which they have brought forth food in their lives in which they found their terrible deaths."

Erecting memorials to the Jewish Holocaust is "a sacred and noble task," Mr. Sheftel believes, but this paragraph "proved that the trial was practically decided in advance. The court had allowed the prosecution to bring testimonies about the horrors of the Holocaust in general and Treblinka in particular, even though the defense did not contest these facts. It did so in order to base its judgement on the 'entirety of the evidence,' to make it a 'memorial.' The trappings of a theater hall, and direct radio and TV broadcasts, were all meant to glorify the show trial and present it to the public as a memorial-building project. From a legal point of view, of course, it was a mockery of justice. In a criminal trial such as this one, the accused had no chance of acquittal."

Realizing that John Demjanjuk was doomed from the outset. Mr. Sheftel's appeal. In this regard, the prosecution, the judges, especially Judge Levin, and the media were most obliging.

The prosecution team is described as "cynical and malicious," unashamed "to file an indictment and plan a show trial on the basis of so little evidence," and prepared to leak information to the press throughout the trial.

The press was also part of the conspiracy to convict. Almost all of the headlines and stories during the trial were inflammatory. "Such headlines," writes Mr. Sheftel, "always accompany show trials, such as the Iynch trials of blacks...in the United States. This was the style of the anti-Semitic press in France and Russia during the Dreyfus and Beyliss trials."

All efforts to stem this violation of sub judice were stymied by the attorney general, who found no fault with the press in view of "the deeply emotional nature of the reports of the trial." In the past, the attorney general had filed charges against reporters for even the slightest hint of guilt or innocence in a court report but, concludes Mr. Sheftel, "when a man is charged with Nazi crimes in the State of lsrael, there is no enforcement of...sub judice."

The greatest villains among the show trial co-conspirators were the judges, especially Dov Levin, who bent over backwards to help the prosecution, even involving himself in the cross-examination. The lsraeli judges did not isolate themselves, like a jury, from outside influences. On the contrary, they were enthralled with their own press clippings. "In the entire legal history of the State of Israel there is no record of a judge - certainly not a Supreme Court justice," writes Mr. Sheftel, "methodically collecting and reading, on a daily basis, press reports of a trial in which he is involved." When this outrageous contravention was made public by the defense, no one said anything, "another example of the cowardice and hypocrisy of the thousands of members of the Israeli legal community," says Mr. Sheftel.

The entire trial, Ukrainians will recall, was run like a circus. Outbursts and catcalls were permitted by the judges, and the police in the courtroom did little to stop it. Various members of the Knesset were in the room and often commented on the proceedings to the press. When the sentence of death was pronounced, "a terrible commotion began in the courtroom,'' writes Mr. Sheftel. "All the disorder there had been up to then merely naughtiness compared to the chaos that erupted now. The unruly crowd began cursing, shouting and screaming insults. 'Death, Death, Death to Ivan, Death to the defense attorney. Death to all Ukrainians. Death, Death, Death.' The people were dancing, stamping their feet, waving their fists in the air."

No sooner had the death sentence been announced then Judge Levin was off on a lecture tour of the United States. Speaking at the Jewish Community Center in Norfolk, Va., he proclaimed: "We cannot be impressed by someone claiming 'I am innocent.' Innocence is not what you say in your testimony, innocence must be proven."

"Future generations, their scholars and jurists, will have contempt not for Demjanjuk," Mr. Sheftel rightfully concludes, "but for the sentence his judges imposed on him."

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