Brandenburg/Havel – There is this letter on the table: old, yellowed paper, closely written in pencil, in Dutch. The letter begins with the words: “With this letter I have to say goodbye to all of you. By the time you or you receive this letter, I’ll have already left you. I hope and trust that you will remain strong … ”
At the top of the letter is the date: May 1, 1942. It is the farewell letter from Johan Hendrik Heijer, a Dutch Social Democrat who was shot by three SS men in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Just like the other 70 members of a resistance group with whom he fought against the Nazis.
“For me, my father wasn’t just a resistance fighter. For me he was a hero, ”says Christoffel Heijer. He brought this letter with him to Brandenburg / Havel this Wednesday morning. Because the next day a process of great international scope will begin there: 100-year-old Josef S. will then be on trial. He has to answer – 76 years after the end of the Second World War. The 32-page indictment accuses the man of complicity in murder in 3518 cases. Until February 1945, Josef S. was an SS guard in what was then Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Oranienburg.
Volkmar Otto
The farewell letter from Johann Hendrik Heijer.
Christoffel Heijer says that the trial is very important for him and for many other relatives of victims of the Nazi regime. “I last saw my father when I was six years old. I didn’t know it would be the last time. It was a shock when I realized that. ”The loss of his father had influenced and shaped his entire life. Also that the perpetrators were not convicted. He still has nightmares. Heijer is 87 years old, his voice is fragile when he talks about his father, and it is repeatedly suffocated by tears. But he speaks clearly and focused: “Murder is not fate. Murder is a crime that cannot be time barred. “
Heijer came with Antoine Grumbach, an 80-year-old French man whose father was also murdered in Sachsenhausen. Both are represented by lawyer Thomas Walther, one of the most renowned lawyers in this field. There are a total of 17 co-plaintiffs, including seven concentration camp survivors. “It’s not an everyday process,” says Walther. “Actually, the indictment is an anachronism.” So many years after the war, it is only now being negotiated what role the perpetrators and, above all, the accomplices and accomplices should play. “That should have been legally clarified a long time ago,” he said. It’s about a search for truth.
Failures of the Federal German judiciary
“In Germany, many people fail to see the importance of this case,” says Christoph Heubner, Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee. “This trial is not about survivors’ need for revenge. It is an expression of the expectation that a court will deliver a judgment. They are trials of late justice. ”The trial took place so late because the German judiciary had criminally neglected the Nazi trials for many decades. “She was not interested in pursuing the perpetrators.”
Volkmar Otto
Lawyer and representative of the joint plaintiffs: Thomas Walther.
Very few perpetrators and their helpers were brought to justice, only a fraction was convicted. Heubner’s example: 3,000 guards were deployed in the Stutthof concentration camp, only 50 were convicted. “The perpetrators have simply returned to the middle of German society. They have disappeared into silence and continue to live. ”This silence always includes further contempt for the victims. The perpetrators could also tell today’s youth what it means to get caught in such crimes.
The violence that killed the two co-plaintiffs’ fathers is still real, says Heubner. The danger shines up to the present day, as shown by anti-Semitism across Europe, right-wing extremism and populist hatred, as shown by the attack in Halle or the anti-Semitic graffiti that has just become known at the Auschwitz memorial. “It is a bitter feeling for the survivors and bereaved that this process is taking place in such an environment.” The graffiti in Auschwitz are disgusting. “The takeover of the memorial by anti-Semites is a show of force: we are still there. Just don’t think it’s over. That is unbearable for opera. “
That is precisely why it is important that the sons of the murdered speak the day before the trial. “We want to focus on the victims here,” he says. “Because tomorrow the gaze will be directed towards the perpetrator.”
Clear expectations of the accused
Antoine Grumbach, the French architect, expresses a clear expectation of the process: “I expect this man to declare himself guilty and take on the role that he has taken in this killing machine.” The Frenchman reports that his father is with his mother 1940 from Paris to London wanted to join the resistance movement of Charles de Gaulle. They went to Algeria to get a ship to England. Then he fought in the resistance in Morocco, was arrested by French police officers and taken to Germany by plane. His father was in a labor camp and in a death camp. In Sachsenhausen he then died in the “small area”. It was a place where the prisoners were given no food and were left to die. “My father was a Jew, but he was not murdered as a Jew, but as a resistance fighter.”
Volkmar Otto
Antonie Grumbach shows a photo of his father.
The process is important to explain the crimes in the concentration camp, because in Sachsenhausen many variants of killing were first tried out, which were then used in other concentration camps. “The world needs to know how this machinery worked,” says Antoine Grumbach.
Christoffel Heijer says that his father was arrested by two Dutch Gestapo men in March 1941, as were all 71 members of the resistance group. They were charged with possessing weapons and illegally publishing a newspaper. “He was tortured but did not testify,” said his son. When he was six, he and his mother were still able to visit his father in prison. “I still have the stench of the toilet bucket in my nose.” The entire group were brought to Sachsenhausen. Heijer also mentions the names of the three SS men who shot his father. You have not been convicted.
When his father’s suicide note came, his mother had gray hair. “She just cried, cried, cried. And at some point never talked about the war again. “
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