. NMT04-T0468
Volume IV · Page 468
| could be forced to work for the German war
effort. This would have been another war crime, but at least it would not have
been so immediately disastrous for the victims. The Einsatzgruppen were out to kill "inferiors" and, first of all, the Jews. But in the documentation of the war crimes trials since the end of the. war, no explanation appears as to why, from the viewpoint of the Nazis, the Jew had to die. In fact, most of the defendants in all these proceedings have expressed a great regard for the Jew. They assert they have admired him, befriended him, and to have deplored the atrocities committed against him. It would seem they were ready to help him in every way except to save him from being killed. The Einsatzgruppen were told at Pretzsch that "the Jews" supported bolshevism, but there is no evidence that every Jew had espoused bolshevism, although, even if this were true, killing him for his political belief would still be murder. As the Einsatzkommandos entered new cities and towns and villages they did not even know where to look for the Jews. They could not even be sure who were Jews. Each Einsatzkommando was equipped with several interpreters, but it became evident throughout the trial that these invading forces did not carry sufficient linguistic talent to cope with the different languages of the States, provinces, and localities through which they moved. There can be no doubt that because of the celerity with which the order was executed countless non-Jews were killed on the supposition that they were Jews. Frequently, the only test applied to determine judaism was that of physiognomy. One either justifies the Fuehrer Order or one does not. One supports the killing of the Jews or denounces it. If the massacres are admitted to be unsupportable and if the defendants assert that their participation was the result of physical and moral duress, the issue is clear and it becomes only a question of determining how effective and oppressive was the force exerted to compel the reluctant killer. If, however, the defendants claim that the killing of the Jews was justified, but this claim does not commend itself to human reason and does not meet the requirements of law, then it is inevitable that the defendants committed a crime. It is the privilege of a defendant to put forth mutually exclusive defenses, and it is the duty of the court to consider them all. But it is evident that the insistence on the part of the defendants that the massacres were justified because the Jews constituted an immediate danger to Germany inevitably weakens the argument that they acted only under duress exerted on them personally; and in turn, the "personal duress" argument enfeebles the |
