No Age Limit on Bringing Killers to Justice

There is no statute of limitations on murder … all the much more so in a case of mass murder.

Gregor Formanek is 100 years old. Formanek was charged with aiding and abetting in the murder of 3,322 people at Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. The German appeals court determined that he is fit to stand trial in his role in the mass murder of Jews in Germany.

Earlier a lower court in Germany ruled that as a then-99-year-old he “was permanently incapable of standing trial”. They were overruled.

Yet there are some essential questions to ask.

There is no age limit for murder. In most jurisdictions when a heinous murder is committed, even by a minor, they are often tried as an adult.

The question in most democratic legal systems is identical. The question is the same regardless of jurisdiction. It does not matter if it is federal or state, in the U.S. or Canada or Germany or in Israel.

In order for a person to stand trial in a criminal case they must be able to aid in their own defense. If they cannot assist, then they cannot be tried. That also applies to the sanity plea. It does not matter how horrific the crime.

As you can imagine this often becomes a battle of the psychologists and psychiatrists. In the case of Gregor Formanek a lower German court ruled him incapable but a higher court ruled he was capable and kicked the case back down to the criminal courts to be tried.

We are well acquainted with the age versus clarity question that plagued the U.S. presidential election. It is no different here. Age does not matter, just one’s capability. There are people in their 90s who function intellectually as well as their young counterparts.

In this case there are very important legal and philosophical issues at stake. People who perpetrate evil acts and acts against humanity need to be held accountable no matter the passage of time. The information and historical reality need to be read into the court record as facts that occurred, not as events that are open to interpretation or even denied.

The victims and perpetrators are numbering fewer and fewer. That is one of the most important reasons for this trial to continue. These trials must be covered in the media, not just in the traditional media but in the “new media” as well, so that young people will learn that the Holocaust actually happened.

Study after study shows that young adults have less and less knowledge about the Holocaust and more think that it never happened — that Jews made up the Holocaust to justify the creation of the State of Israel and the oppression of the Palestinians.

The very first Nazi war trials both under the Soviets and the international community as in the Nuremberg Trials had one major goal. The primary goal was not justice although that was important and the judicial system was the best vehicle. The goal was to put into the record what happened.

Gregor Formanek does not deny that he was a member of the SS in Sachsenhausen. The Russians already convicted him and sentenced him to 25 years although he was released after 10. His guilt is not actually in question.

In 1960 Israel discovered that Adolf Eichmann was living on Garibaldi Street in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben Gurion sent in a team of 8 to capture Eichman and bring him to Israel to stand trial for his role in transporting Jews to their deaths during the Holocaust.

Gideon Hausner prosecuted the case for Israel. The transcript was over 3,500 pages long. The trial took 56 days. There were 112 witnesses. Only 14 witnesses actually saw Eichmann during the Holocaust. Hausner ignored recommendations to only call 30 witnesses.

Hausner wanted to produce a comprehensive historical and legal record of the Holocaust. Eichmann’s personal notes were admitted into evidence as well as his lack of contrition.

Eichmann’s defense was similar to those at the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46. Their defense was that they were following orders and doing their jobs. They were but cogs in a wheel, having sworn allegiance to Hitler.

Hausner was correct — as was Hannah Arendt.

Arendt was a world-renowned social and political philosopher who covered the Eichman trial for the New Yorker. Her coverage became the monumental work “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.”

Arendt coined the expression “The Banality of Evil.” While watching the trial, she observed Eichmann. Arendt concluded that Eichmann was neither a sociopath nor a fanatic.

If anything, Eichman was boring and humdrum. He went about doing his job. His job was the murder of the Jews of Europe. He did not care one way or the other. It was Hitler’s law.

These lessons cannot be forgotten. Just like Gideon Hausner and Hannah Arendt recorded what happened. We must also record. If there are still Nazi SS members who participated in the murder process alive and functioning — they must be brought to trial.