For decades, Emil Farkash has been waiting for this day.
The former Israeli athlete, a legendary sports teacher from Haifa, who was born 92 years ago in what is now called Slovakia, will appear today (Thursday) as a witness in a trial in Germany against Josef Schutz, who was a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of Berlin.
Schutz, now 100, is charged with aiding and abetting the murder of at least 3,500 people while serving in the camp by shooting, starving and abandoning patients.
The proceeding against Schutz, who volunteered for the SS and served in the camp from 1945-1942, is one of several trials conducted in Germany against people who were involved in operating concentration and extermination camps in various positions.
Their prosecution was made possible following John Demjanjuk's precedent in Germany for his part in the murder of Jews as a guard in the Sobibor extermination camp.
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"It's good that this trial is going on, even if it's happening at the last minute," Emil Farkash tells Israel Today. "For many years I suffered because no one was interested in these things. Who left Czechoslovakia. We were told that they were sent to work, but they were immediately killed in the gas chambers. We did not know anything about the gas chambers and crematoria then.
"In Sachsenhausen I was in a group of 300 non-Jews. Every day, after the parade at five in the morning, we received brand new military shoes, intended for German soldiers and SS men. God forbid they would have pain in their legs. "Political, he came and asked me where I was from. When he heard that I was also from Czechoslovakia, we started speaking Czech and he gave me medicine so that I could recover. I can say bluntly, that this person saved my life."
A barracks building in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Photo: AFP
Farkash continues to recreate those terrible days.
"In Sachsenhausen, unlike the camps where I was afterwards, there was no problem of corpses," he says.
"There was a crematorium there, which burned day and night. But they did not have time to burn all the bodies, so some of them threw into deep pits. To the pits they would also throw living people, I saw it with my own eyes. They had to run and jump into the pits. They came there to transport "From all over Europe. Trains full of Jews, one on top of the other."
Farkash rejects the allegations against the prosecution of Nazis at the most advanced ages due to their generally poor health: "No mercy should be shown to those who were involved in the murder of Jews. They should be prosecuted, no matter what age. "To the camps, to lose school, to work like a donkey and to be beaten, because I am a Jew? Whoever is guilty is guilty and should be punished."
Josef Schutz in court, Photo: AFP
"There is no statute of limitations for such crimes"
Thomas Walter, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the trial, also played a key role in prosecuting Demjanjuk in Germany and in obtaining the precedent-setting ruling that allowed the guards and camp officials to be prosecuted.
"The late trials are very significant, as these are not isolated and rare cases but mass crimes from the Nazi period," Walter says.
"Doing justice is never too late. There is no statute of limitations on such crimes. When talking to Emil Farkash and other survivors, one sees that these sentences allow them to find peace with themselves and their past.
"For the German justice system, which for decades has been dormant in these matters, these trials are a very important work. Some see them as a fig leaf designed to hide the failures of years gone by. But their main purpose is the effort to prosecute all those involved in these crimes. "It is also important for future generations and future crimes. There is a statement in these sentences: In Germany, people who were involved in crimes committed decades ago are also being prosecuted. In other words, it is a message for the future and not just a look at the past."
"In Germany, those who were involved in crimes committed decades ago are also being prosecuted."
Sachsenhausen camp, Photo: EP
"Can smear the procedures for years"
However, Nazi hunter Ephraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Institute's branch in Jerusalem, points to ongoing difficulties in prosecuting people who were involved in the "final solution" mechanism.
"The dramatic change that began 12 years ago with the indictment of Demjanjuk is important, and so are its results. But there are some issues that the German system has not addressed, that without them the number of these trials could have been much greater. There are knowledgeable and experienced experts. They hand over the cases to the plaintiffs in the defendants' area of residence. It is not possible to know who the people handling the cases are. And not to go to jail for even one day, since they are dead in the meantime.There is no attempt to speed up the processes so that these people go to jail.
"In addition, there is also the story of the Einsatzgruppen (SS units that were involved in the execution of about 2 million Jews in the Soviet Union).
None of them have been prosecuted to date.
this is very frustrating".