For the Survivors, it is perhaps the worst outcome of the procedure. First, the news that the German judiciary would assume more than 70 years after the end of Nazi rule, once more, of their fates. Good news though, maybe a bit of justice was so still; but it is also associated with the price that the horrors of the past had to be brought to light. Now, however, came to an abrupt end, just after the defendant had received the word and his view on the events was signs. On Thursday, the regional court of Münster has suspended the trial against the former SS-man Johann R. because of the defendant until further compromise. Since the three week period provided for by the criminal procedure code as the maximum interruption time, would have to start the process from the beginning, even if Johann R. came back to power.
Alexander Haneke
editor in the policy.
F. A. Z.
It is the danger that resides in every this decades-delayed processes. The public Prosecutor’s office accuses the 95-year-old Johann R. accessory to murder in several hundred cases because he served from 1942 to 1944 as a guard of the SS in the concentration camp of Stutthof. More than 100 000 people were interned until 1945, around 65 000 survived. The camp in a forest clearing near Gdansk, was so small that the young SS man could have remained, according to the Prosecutor’s office is impossible concealed, that he supported with his wax services in the mass murder. However, only in the last few years, following on from the sensational proceedings against John Demjanjuk and Oskar Gröning, it was the judiciary in the sense that the simple guards of the Stutthof could have made an offence. Two of them were, in spite of her age, physically and mentally still able to follow a process. They were accused of, but prior to the commencement of the main hearing, one of them built physically strong, which is why the case against him was separated. John R. there was only the requirement to negotiate only two hours a day with one day break. But at the end of November, his health was so strong that he had to be treated in hospital. That he’s going to recover once again, is possible but not very likely, said the medical expert on Thursday.
