SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 397
of the “Treblinka gassings” rather than about the massacres against Palestinians.
Although the trial resulted eventually in Demjanjuk’s acquittal
– thanks mainly to the courageous efforts of Yoram Sheftel, his
Israeli lawyer – this did not in any way impair the picture of “Treblinka,
the extermination camp” that had been implanted in the mind of the
public.
When the bloodthirsty terror of the Israeli army in the Gaza strip had
caused world-wide disgust in late 2008 and early 2009, John Demjanjuk,
now 89 years old, had to be dragged once again onto the propaganda
stage. His trial in Germany, which is taking place while this book is
prepared for publication, will bring the Holocaust into the limelight one
more time.
The zeal of the German authorities to bring an old man to trial, although
nothing concrete is there to justify this, cannot be explained
solely by the proverbial servility of the German puppet state towards
Israel and Zionist organizations. The German ruling class needs the Holocaust
more than anything else for its own survival. It needs it to nip in
the bud any kind of resurgence of German self-esteem, to block the rise
of any national forces and ideas, and hence to remain in power.
In order to demonstrate over and over again to the German people as
a whole and to young Germans in particular the abject character of the
National Socialist system, the “freest state in German history” has required,
ever since it came into being, a never-ending stream of Nazimonsters
as proof of the abominable state of mind of the German generation
of WWII.
We will give a striking example of this policy: In 1984 the German
magazine Stern arranged for a disgusting farce by setting up a meeting
between Toivi Blatt and the former SS-Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel.
The latter, born in 1911, had been arrested in 1962 and sentenced to life
imprisonment at the Hagen Sobibór trial of 1966 for his complicity in
the murder of at least 150,000 Jews. He had been released from prison
in 1976, arrested again in 1980, but released once more after an appeal
in 1981. Appeal proceedings had begun in 1982, had gone on for three
years, and had ended with the confirmation of the previous sentence. In
view of his advanced age and his poor health, Frenzel did not have to
return to prison. He died in 1996. 1146
1146 J. Schelvis, op. cit. (note 71), p. 253f.