War Criminal on Trial - The Rauca Case
by Sol Littman, Lster & Orpen Denys Limited,
Toronto, c.1983, 195 pp., $17.94
This book, by Toronto journalist and community affairs specialist for CBC's Newshour, Sol Littman, was born out of a collection of articles originally produced by the author for publication in Saturday Night magazine. The book is dedicated:
"To the courageous Jews of the Kaunas ghetto - the few who survived and the many who were slain."
In
a sense, this book is their story; that of the Jews who lived
throughout the Nazi years in all of the Nazi-occupied countries of
Europe. Mr. Littman has documented his book thoroughly, travelling
extensively to interview survivors of the Kaunas ghetto in Israel and
elsewhere. This is a book well worth reading. What one reads here of
the horrific impossibility of existence as a Jewish adult, child or
octogenarian is a reflection of what occurred elsewhere in Europe from
1939 to 1945. Survival of a handful of Europe's Jewry, under the
obscene conditions which existed for them, was nothing less than
miraculous.
That such unbelievable conditions could occur
anywhere on this Earth, singling out any specific group of people is the
horror of our time. That the perpetrators and indeed the initiators of
many of the atrocities described in this book, as in many others, would
themselves survive - time and justice - and indeed, thrive in their
newfound homelands, be they cities in Canada or somewhere in South
America is just as unbelievable as the crimes they committed against
humanity.
Mt. Littman points out at the conclusion of his book
(chapter 17), that there are currently over one thousand Nazi
collaborators living in Canada. Over the past decades there have been
over one hundred requests for extradition of alleged war criminals from
such democratic Western countries as France, Holland, Belgium, Norway
and Germany received by Canadian authorities. Additional extradition
requests have been received in Canada from Eastern Bloc countries, all
of which wish to bring these criminals to justice. Canada has a policy
of unwillingness to comply with such requests from Iron Curtain
countries; there is a certain sensitivity toward these alleged war
criminals - we would not, as civilized, democratic people, wish to
return them to communist countries, would we? Heaven knows, they might
be found guilty and punished for their imputed crimes.
Needless
to say, Canada has not been diligent in responding to requests from the
Western democratic countries, any more than she had to Iron Curtain
countries. The Rauca case marked the first time Canada actually moved
itself to accede to such a request.
Through this book we are
taken on a journey. We are first introduced to Helmut Rauca, Canadian
senior citizen and respected member of his suburban Toronto community,
when three members of the RCMP politely arrest the then-73-year-old
German-born man. Taken into custody at RCMP regional headquarters in
downtown Toronto, Rauca is fingerprinted, photographed, and appears
before Associate Chief Justice William Parker of the Supreme Court of
Ontario, to be charged. He is taken then to the Toronto Don Jail after
his arrest, charged with "aiding and abetting the murder of 10,500
persons on or about the 28th day of October, 1941, at Kaunas,
Lithuania."
Albert Helmut Rauca was part of an SS security unit termed "Einsatzgruppe",
stationed in Kaunas from July 1941 to July of 1944. He was an SS
master sergeant and member of the command headquarters of the Security
Police and the SS Security Service for the General District of
Lithuania. Rauca was proud of his position with the SS. He was feared
and despised by the inmates of the Kaunas ghetto; well known to them all
for his predilection for unpredictable and violent action.
Much
as was done in other large European cities under German occupation, the
capital city of Kaunas, through its civil administration under the
Nazis, collected its Jewish population in a small geographic area set
aside for that purpose as a collection point; a place where the Jewish
men, women and children could be held, apart from the general
population, and the young and strong could be used for slave labour
while gradually culling the old, the ill and the very young through Aktionen
whereby firstly the young intellectual males were collected under the
pretext of an offer of 'good jobs', and taken instead to a nearby fort
and murdered.
This select group was culled initially because it
was feared that insurrection or insubordination might be initiated from
among their ranks. Next came a round-up of the children of the ghetto
where stormtroopers and eagerly helpful Lithuanians rooted out children
of all ages wherever they had been hidden so that they too might be
taken to one of the forts surrounding the capital city and summarily
executed.
The third (and near final) roundup, termed the 'Grosse Aktion',
was one in which all the inhabitants of the ghetto were commanded to
appear at a central meeting place and at that time, Rauca busied himself
separating the people who appeared before him in turn; singly and in
family groupings they were separated into groups of those who were still
desirable as slave labour, and those who were more immediately
expendable. An indication to join those grouped on the right was a
death sentence, an order to join those assembled to the left meant a
brief respite at least until weary, starved bodies could no longer be
pushed to produce and they too would be eliminated.
This
scenario was repeated in many other ghettos, with others, among them the
infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, playing the role of god, choosing those who
would die more immediately than others.
The Judenrat
in Kaunas was, however, quite different than that which existed in most
other ghettos of the time. Its head, a highly respected elderly
physician who spared no efforts at attempting to save his people, was
Dr. Eichanan Elkes. Dr. Elkes' desperate attempts to persuade the
Lithuanian civil authority (many of whom had been former colleagues and
brother military officers) to relent in their acquiescent prosecution of
Nazi directives, and his unflinching accusations, face-to-face,
directed at the Nazi officers that they would one day 'pay' for their
horrible crimes place him in a different sphere altogether.
Similarly, the other members of the Altestenrat
(Council of Elders) conspired, not with the Nazis to save their own
skins, but actively against them. Also in Kaunas the Jewish ghetto
police, that group of Jewish men who in other ghettos acted more as Nazi
collaborators than Jews, were vastly different under Dr. Elkes and his
Council. Proud young Jewish men who had been responsible youth leaders,
athletes and intellectuals were chosen and this group of ghetto
policemen collaborated with their own, many of them also being active in
the ghetto underground.
This book details their daily living
conditions, their ferocious fears of their short-lived futures, and the
gruelling work to which they were submitted, to survive. The horrors
experienced by the ghetto during the various roundups, and in the final
trial through the burning of the ghetto are unforgettably re-lived here.
If
anyone, pacifist-forgiving Jew, or uncomprehendingly removed Gentile,
might ever be assailed by a sense of misgiving about the rightfulness of
pressing for prosecution of war criminals at however much a distance in
time 1984 represents, this book should be required reading.
The
performance of the government of Canada, aside from the honourable
performance of a few of its servants like Corporal Fred Yetter of the
RCMP, and Christopher Amerasinghe who acted as crown prosecutor for the
Attorney-General of Canada, is appalling, dismal and totally
uncreditworthy. With a little bit of diligence, Rauca's records in
Germany might have been perused and his entry to Canada would have been
denied initially, back in the 50s. But reality is that the Government
of Canada was far more anxious throughout the 30s, 40s and 50s to keep
European Jews out of Canada than it was any other European nationals.
Our
country has much to answer for, but it continues to appear as though
this represents simply another incident to be buried, and lip-service
will continue to be paid to human rights while the actuality of actively
pursuing those goals are but a dream.
An end-quote from Dr. Emil
Fackenheim of the University of Toronto appears most apt at the
conclusion of this book. When asked why Jews cannot 'forgive and
forget' (an infuriatingly impossible question), Dr. Fackenheim replies:
"It is not out of revenge that we demand the prosecution of war
criminals, but out of a sense of universal justice. The Holocaust was a
tragedy inflicted on the Jews, but it was also an act of pure evil that
affects all mankind." No more need be said.
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