In society

The death of the righteous

September 23, 2005 Alexander Cherkasov

Today, the funeral of the "Nazis" Simon Vizenthal . He died on September 19. He fell asleep and did not wake up - the death of the righteous. Two years ago, in April 2003, he noticed that the work of his life was fulfilled: "I survived all of them, and if there are still fascists-criminal offices, the search for which I did not do, then they are too old today, or not getting out of the bed of disabled people. I did my job and I am leaving."

Born in 1908 in Western Ukraine, Wizenthal in 1934 graduated from Prague Technical University, received a diploma of an architect engineer. But the century prepared another path to him. After the Soviet occupation of 1939, the Wizenthal, who worked as a technician at the factory in Lviv, escaped links to Siberia. In 1941, the Nazis came. It seemed that it was impossible to survive - in the camps 87 relatives of Simon Vizenthal disappeared in the camps. He himself collaborated with the Polish underground in the Lviv region and for a long time managed to avoid arrest. He even managed to get fake documents for his wife, according to which she became Polka ... But still in 1942 they got into the Yanovskiy concentration camp. There was an escape, and again the camp. In 1945, the guard was already fled-from the approaching front: two hundred escorts grabbed 34 prisoners with them ... out of one and a half thousand. The rest - in the consumption. Why not everyone? Probably, so as not to be sent to the front line ... When the Wizenthal was released from the Mautzhausen allies, he weighed 40 kilograms. It was a miracle, and Wizenthal took him as a mission: to achieve fair retaliation, on behalf of those who did not live.

Criminals were caught by special services. After the war, the Wizenthal for some time was looking for war criminals on the territory of Austria, working in the American military administration, then in the management of strategic services and counterintelligence. In 1947, the Jewish Center for Historical Documentation opened in Linz, which lasted until 1954, when the collected documents were transferred to Israel, to the poison of Vasya-the museum and the archive of the Holocaust. In 1961, Wizenthal founded a new center in Vienna, which has been its name since 1977 and has now has a dossier for more than 22 thousand surviving Nazi criminals.

Among those who managed to catch thanks to the efforts of Simon Vizenthal, figures of different calibers. This is Adolf Eichmann, since 1934 - responsible for the solution of the "Jewish question" in the Main Directorate of the Imperial Security of the Third Reich. The main screw in the car that turned six million Jews in ashes. At the end of the fifties, Wizenthal found his traces in Argentina, from where the Mossad then stole the wrapper. The Supreme Court of Israel sentenced him to the death penalty. On May 31, 1961, the verdict to Eichman was carried out.

Another character, who suffered the punishment thanks to the efforts of the Wizenthal , is Karl Zilberbauer, who sent Anna Frank to the concentration camp. By the way, it was he who, after arrest in 1956, certified the authenticity of Anna’s diary, in which many doubted.

Without the efforts of the "worried public", Nazi crimes could well be forgotten. After the victory and the Nuremberg process, yesterday's allies found the need for specialists of different profiles and were often ready to look at their past through their fingers. The creation of a Bundeswehr without officers and generals of yesterday’s Wehrmacht was impossible. However, the socialist single party of Germany needed disciplined personnel-where did they get them, as not from the former functionaries of the German Workers' Party (though with the prefix: "National Socialist")? In the same way, the European countries occupied in the same way, they chose to forget about the past, or rather, to identify themselves with the winners. Like, for example, Italy. Or France, where the Jews organized the deportations of the Jews, Maurice Papon managed to visit the prefect of Paris and the Minister of the Republic.

In 1967, Wizenthal published the book "The killers among us." The name of this book has been comprehended for many years. The World Memory of the Holocaust - for us seems to be familiar and granted by itself - came only in the late seventies.

In total, the Wizenthal Center contributed to the capture and condemnation of more than 1,100 Nazi criminals.

Only recently, at the beginning of September, a message appeared that, according to his “tip”, the Spanish police are looking for the Nazi criminal Ariberth Him, the “doctor” responsible for the torture and murder of hundreds of prisoners of Mauthausen in the province. Since 1962, Heim was hiding, in 1979 he was convicted in absentia, the German court admitted that he "enjoyed the fear of death experienced by his victims," ​​experimenting on prisoners. And now they calculated: in 2000-2003, the family of Haima transferred 180 thousand euros in Alikant. And Heim, by the way, is 91 years old!
Probably the main merit of Wizenthal is that for forty years the former Nazis dare not openly leave the house. During this time, generations were replaced by a "brown inheritance."

What kind of, it would seem, is this related to us? Indeed, in the USSR, Nazi war criminals - that strangers, that their own - were planted with might and main and put to the wall? Well, not really. In recent decades, rather, for the plan: the "organs" have known that such a grandfather deserves "tower" or "chervonets", but took it, "when the time came." We transplant everyone, so you have to look for new ones! And they were more and more silent. And about Babi Yar, and about the fact that the Germans were not at all in Khatyn at all, but the Ukrainian auxiliary battalion.

And there were still executioners of a different kind - "from their own." Here Beria was shot, and the materials of the investigation - under the cloth. In fact, otherwise it would have to be planted, for example, Kruglova with Serov, and they are ministers. Yes, and Nikita Sergeyevich himself, if you figure it out, the hands were very unclean - that knee -deep.

Several dozens of non -human ones were convicted, some from Beria’s closest encirclement, others - especially outstanding executioners.

But it was the same in Argentina and in Chile - the executioners were not touched until the generation was replaced, only now they take them.

Igor Buntman correctly noted that we did not have his own Nuremberg - and therefore “their armored train” was able to stand on the back of all perestroika with democratization. But the experience of the screening shows that the state’s efforts, without pressure “from below”, are not enough.

As, however, the efforts of the dissidents, the "Gulag archipelago" and all the Samizdat, splashed out of the age of about fifteen to twenty years ago, were not enough. Again, Chekism is in power - and in honor. Crimes continue to overcome the turn of millennia. And “party and statesmen”, in addition to a calm old age, received posthumous glory.

Soviet dissidentism focused on the memory of victims, and by no means punishment of executioners. Why? Christian tradition against the Old Testament? Don't know…

One of my relatives also went to trial at his executioner. He was arrested, an officer, fierce in the winter of 1941-42 in the besieged Leningrad. Tortured as usual. (Then Daniil Harms was also freezed there ...) sentenced to execution, replaced with a prison and held on a “sharashka” in “crosses” - an extra evidence of innocence.
Rehabilitated. So, his investigator is a rare case! -In the 50s they tried. Sergey Sergeyevich, yesterday's convict, went with determination to say everything. He did not say: “Well, he’s some kind of miserable ...” However, there was enough testimony without him. And now I think - where does it come from? Is it right? And is it because we repeat today: “Oh, the time we stand in”?

Simon Vizenthal lived for a long time. Or worked, realizing that we had to live long. And this experience left us all.
We have our own country, its time and our criminals.

More recently, in Serbia on state television, a video cassette was shown with a recording of executions in a ten -year -old screensaver. The same genocide that is now judged in the Hague.

In Russia, differently. Strasbourg, having thought for five years, condemned in February the crimes of generals Shamanov and Nedobitko. And what do we know about them, about these crimes and these generals? What do we know about those “people in masks”, whose efforts have “disappeared” thousands of people?

However, Eichmann and Zilberbauer were once also known to anyone. It is better to look for and judge "their" executioners. History, as you know, does not know the subjunctive mood, but ... If the German and Serbian peoples found the strength to do this, perhaps they would not have known military defeat and national humiliation.

The author is a member of the board of society "Memorial"


Alexander Cherkasov

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