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Leon Schwarzbaum in October 2021: He was the only one in his family to survive the Holocaust
Photo: ANNEGRET HILSE / REUTERS
He had longed for this moment.
Leon Schwarzbaum wanted to take a seat next to his lawyer in this gymnasium of the Brandenburg an der Havel correctional facility, which the Neuruppin district court had converted into a courtroom, and address his word to the man who is being tried here: Josef S., 101 years old, accused of being an accessory to murder in 3,518 counts because he is said to have been an SS guard in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Leon Schwarzbaum was also in the camp.
Not on one of the watchtowers, but as a prisoner, like before in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, because he was a Jew.
Leon Schwarzbaum survived this hell.
He wanted to ask the accused Josef S. why he denied having worked in the camp;
he wanted to look him in the face, even if he didn't expect an answer.
"He wasn't well"
Attorney Thomas Walther now stands up, on the desk in front of him a screen with the words that Leon Schwarzbaum wanted to address to Josef S.
The court summoned the Holocaust survivor for March 10th.
He was not feeling well, the appointment was postponed.
"Last Sunday evening he was still in a good mood and up for a little joke," says Walther.
Leon Schwarzbaum died that night.
He too was 101 years old.
During Walther's speech, a photo of Leon Schwarzbaum appears on the two screens in the improvised courtroom, taken on the first day of this trial in this gymnasium: you can see him in a dark blue suit and tie, elegant and proud to be here.
On his lap a photo of him with his parents Josef and Estera and an uncle.
His entire family was murdered by the Nazis, only Leon Schwarzbaum survived.
It's an honor, says Walther, to lend him his voice and to present what Leon Schwarzbaum wrote down for the day.
more on the subject
Holocaust survivor Leon Schwarzbaum: "The king is dead" by Julia Jüttner
Leon Schwarzbaum was born on February 20, 1921 in Hamburg-Altona, Josef S. three months earlier in Lithuania.
Two men of the same age with paths that couldn't be more different: Leon Schwarzbaum, who was deported to Auschwitz with his parents in 1943, and Josef S., who according to the indictment was already on duty in Sachsenhausen at the same time after having spent two years there had previously joined the SS.
They were both 25 years old when the war was over and both stayed in the Sachsenhausen area: Schwarzbaum in West Berlin, S. in Brandenburg.
murder of a girl
Attorney Walther describes Schwarzbaum's youth in Bedzin, Poland, where the family moved because the mother was homesick.
After the Nazis marched in, Father Schwarzbaum insisted that the Germans were "decent people," a nation of "poets and thinkers."
The father only lost faith in it when they put the family in the ghetto.
At the collection point for Auschwitz, lawyer Leon Schwarzbaum quotes him as saying that he saw an SS officer shoot a girl in the head: "This image stays with me."
Not a sound can be heard in the hall.
"All forgetting or repression doesn't work for me."
Walther describes how a tattoo artist in Auschwitz advised Leon Schwarzbaum to look for a work detail;
the only chance to survive and not be gassed immediately upon arrival.
Just like Schwarzbaum's parents.
more on the subject
Survivor in the trial against SS man: "My life in hell that you guarded" Julia Jüttner reports from Brandenburg an der Havel
Survivors in the trial of a concentration camp guard: "For me, Mr. S. was an accomplice of this death machine" by Julia Jüttner, Brandenburg an der Havel
Trial against 100-year-old concentration camp guard: mass murder "with the help of the accused" Julia Jüttner reports from Brandenburg an der Havel
Walther reports Schwarzbaum's fear of "unpredictable SS men" who shot prisoners "for fun";
of the certainty of only waiting for death that hunger could not assuage;
of his duties as a forced laborer for Siemens;
of two "death marches" in clogs in the bitter cold.
And he reports on the time in the Sachsenhausen camp, where the defendant claims not to have been.
Leon Schwarzbaum had resolved to address the man of the same age directly: "Mr. Josef S., I appeal to you here in Brandenburg to give up your denials and repressions, the trial is not over yet." Thomas Walther speaks the words in Schwarzbaum's name, he speaks them forcefully and loudly.
»Your head will be full of images and experiences from that time.
I'm sure.
Neither of us met in Sachsenhausen, we only missed each other for a few weeks.«
Josef S. listens, he wears thick headphones.
Sometimes he nods as if to signal that he is following the words.
“In this place, talk about what you
have experienced - as I do for my side," Walther quotes from Schwarzbaum's speech.
"I'm still haunted by images from that time every day." He recalls one thing that he hasn't forgotten: Naked people on the back of a truck, crying and screaming.
“No one could help them anymore.
I keep seeing this picture.
Again and again."
Spectators rise
Because Leon Schwarzbaum and Josef S. were not in Sachsenhausen at the same time, Schwarzbaum was not allowed to be a joint plaintiff in this process.
The presiding judge Udo Lechtermann, a man with a feeling for such a procedure, therefore invited him as a witness - and now allowed lawyer Walther to present Schwarzbaum's experiences.
It is a gesture of reminiscence and appreciation, but above all it is a rarity in court.
The Code of Criminal Procedure does not provide for such a thing.
It has been shown that "disregard for all human rights, violence and hatred" should not prevail, Walther argues.
"Not then and not today." Leon Schwarzbaum's friends, such as the filmmaker Hans-Erich Viet, stand up in the auditorium, as do the joint plaintiffs' representatives Hans-Jürgen Förster and Rajmund Niwinski.
According to Christoph Heubner of the International Auschwitz Committee, there was nothing Leon Schwarzbaum prepared for in the final years of his life so meticulously and tormentingly as for his presence and his testimonies at Nazi trials.
His anger was great to the end, “that the murders of his parents and all the other victims of the Holocaust had been called out in so few German courtrooms and that the perpetrators had grown old in peace and in harmony with themselves and society to be allowed to."
Leon Schwarzbaum knew »that his days were numbered and that these words would be his legacy«, says Thomas Walther.
He repeatedly reminded the perpetrators that they too would soon be before the Supreme Court.
"Now he's waiting for her there and continues to stand as a witness."
In order not to go directly to the agenda, Judge Lechtermann introduces a short break after the speech.