Douglas on the Death of Demjanjuk
Lawrence Douglas, James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, spoke with the Reuters news service and subsequently wrote a March 20 piece for Salon.com about the recent death of John Demjanjuk, a retired U.S. engine mechanic convicted in 2011 for his role in killing 28,000 Jews as a guard at a Nazi death camp during World War Two. "His passing brings us closer to the day when the Holocaust moves from lived memory of survivors and perpetrators into history," Douglas told Reuters. "That one of the last trials (linked to the Nazi era) involved such a minor figure in no way detracts from the justice of the case.” Douglas concluded in the Salon.com article, “That this era should end not with a Goering or an Eichmann or even a Barbie in the dock is less ironic than it is fitting. The Holocaust was not accomplished through the acts of Nazi statesmen, SS bureaucrats and Gestapo henchmen alone. It was made possible by the Demjanjuks of the world, the thousands of lowly foot soldiers of genocide.”