[2019] Citizen 865

by Debbie Cenziper

  AFTER COURT, NED STUTMAN left to give an update to Eli Rosenbaum back in Washington. Chubin found Degan standing by herself, a lonely figure in the cold, marble hallway. The older woman looked up briefly and Chubin sucked in her breath. After the grueling testimony in court, Sophie Degan appeared utterly serene.

  “Thank you,” Degan said slowly, “for letting me tell my story.”

  Chubin had fought to keep her composure all day, but her eyes grew moist as she smiled at Degan, a poetry lover who had come to embrace the words of Henry David Thoreau.

  Every blade in the field, every leaf in the forest, lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.

  As it happened, the tears came later, when Chubin sat alone in her room at a Marriott near the courthouse. As night fell over Manhattan, she felt spent and numb.

  What she really needed was sleep, distance from ghettos and guards, but the dreams were back and they were relentless. She was a prisoner in a Nazi camp, crouching in blazing white light, shrinking down to the nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Compassion

  New York City

  1998

  On the eleventh day in federal court, Jakob Reimer took the stand to face his accusers. Ned Stutman could not detect the slightest hint of surliness in Reimer’s demeanor, no flaring temper or the lusty indignation of the wrongly accused. Reimer wore a knit tie and striped shirt, a most ordinary American, and as he settled in his chair on the witness stand, he glanced sheepishly at the judge.

  Stutman nodded briefly, intent on staying focused. His wife, Suzanne, had come from Washington and was sitting in the back of the courtroom with their youngest son. Sweet, familiar faces, a lifeline to a place far removed from occupied Poland and the men who had so loyally served the Reich.

  For more than two days on the witness stand, Reimer had spun a hard-knock story before the judge. Under questioning by defense attorney Ramsey Clark, Reimer had been a starving prisoner of war, an unwitting Nazi recruit, a benign office manager far removed from the murder of Poland’s Jews. Stutman was anxious to address Reimer himself, and he glanced down at his worn legal pad, filled with hundreds of questions culled from strategy sessions with David Rich and Peter Black.

  There was no doubt that Reimer made a sympathetic defendant. Once, he had interrupted his own attorney to praise Simon Friedman, OSI’s oldest witness, who had described being shot and left for dead by Trawniki men during a mass execution at the Treblinka killing center.

  “I have to give Mr. Friedman a lot of credit at his age,” Reimer said moments after he took the witness stand, startling the lawyers in the room.

  “I beg your pardon?” Clark replied.

  “I have to give Mr. Friedman a lot of credit at his age,” Reimer went on, “and I can only say that starting in 1941, I worked in the office and this was all under the strictest secrecy. We didn’t know anything about it.”

  Reimer paused and then added, “I am sorry, Mr. Clark, if you want to ask me more questions.”

  “We are supposed to do this by questions and answers, as you know,” his lawyer scolded.

  “Sorry,” Reimer said again. “I had to get this off my chest.”

  From the prosecutor’s table, Stutman had listened as Reimer described being taken to Trawniki, filthy and malnourished, and given food and a uniform. He insisted that he had only been deployed to Lublin for a single day, to guard a block of empty houses, and that on the morning of the ravine shooting, he had no idea what would eventually happen in the woods.

  “In the army, you know it, never, ever they tell you,” Reimer said, stumbling over the words. “When you face the battle, that hill we have to take, then you get the order. You don’t know when you are in the army. You are taken there, then you are given the order, what the purpose is.”

  “Do they tell you what you are going to do?” Clark asked.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Reimer testified that on the night before the ravine shooting, he had been taken with his platoon to a shack somewhere outside Trawniki. He was woken up before dawn by an SS man and told to gather the guards.

  “Did you have to find them in the dark?” Clark asked.

  “You have no light. You feel around at first. I felt around, if every bunk was empty. I knew I was late now and I rushed, and as I rushed, I stumbled and fell and I was knocked out, and I was laying there on the spot.”

  It was a wildly disparate story from the one that Reimer had told Eli Rosenbaum and Neal Sher in New York in 1992. During that first interview, Reimer said he had been late to the operation because he overslept, an implausible explanation given what Stutman knew about the exacting nature of SS operations. Now Reimer was insisting that he had blacked out from a fall.

  From the witness stand, Reimer went on, “I fell on my head.”

  “What happened next?” Clark asked.

  “I was laying on my face and somebody came and grabbed my right and left shoulder and started to lift me up and I came to. I got up. I was half in a daze, and then he led me where the group was. I didn’t know where the group was. I had no idea where they had gone.”

  “When you came up to the others…what did you see?”

  “I saw a little ditch or a little pit that was a small area where I saw some dead bodies.”

  “Try and describe the pit,” Clark coaxed. “Could you tell how many bodies were in there?”

  “No. I am only guessing. I had no idea how many there were. There weren’t many, though.”

  “There weren’t a thousand?”

  “No.”

  “Were there a hundred?”

  “There were not even a dozen. It was a small group.”

  “How big was the pit? Can you estimate?”

  Reimer paused. “Let me describe it this way. The nine men that were standing around this pit was bigger than the pit itself. That is how I surmised that it was a small pit.”

  Once again, Reimer had changed his story, drastically scaling back the scope of the shooting operation. In 1992, he had described a large pit covered with wooden planks so that SS and Trawniki men could walk from one end to the other. Now, the size of the pit had changed, and so had the death count, from as many as sixty people to fewer than a dozen.

  “Were the bodies clothed?” Clark was asking.

  “Yes.”

  “Did they have uniforms on?”

  “No…I thought they were civilians.”

  “Did you ever find out who these people were?”

  In 1992, Reimer had told Rosenbaum and Sher that the victims had come from a Jewish labor camp.

  “We had no idea who they were. The Jewish persecution was under the strictest secrecy.…When you are raised behind the Iron Curtain, we didn’t know anything about Nazis or what they were all about. We had not the faintest idea. When you live under a totalitarian government, you don’t dare ask questions or you wind up someplace. No. No. We had no idea what the Nazis were all about, what their aim was.”

  “Do you have any knowledge as to whether these were common criminals or whether they were people who were threatening security or anything like that?”

  “That is what we assumed. I thought they had been found guilty. We didn’t have the foggiest.”

  “I know it is hard to remember…,” Clark said, “but do you remember anybody in the pit moving?”

  “Well, I have been thinking about that a lot,” Reimer replied. “I don’t know why it comes into my head that somebody moved or pointed to his head. I don’t know. It is possible.”

  “When you got over here, did you ever tell your children about it or any—”

  Reimer interrupted. “Mr. Clark, I couldn’t possibly even talk to anybody or explain. They wouldn’t understand. This was with me for over fifty years and every time you look on the TV and you saw Holocaust and this comes in your head what I had seen, so this builds up and builds up and finally, and then in 1992, I said they shot a labor camp.”

 
“Who did you say this to in 1992?”

  “To Mr. Rosenbaum and Mr. Sher.”

  “Was that the first time you talked about it in all these years?”

  “Yes. And I told them that we went to exterminate the labor camp.…We were nine men with rifles.…I should have said, ‘Shoot.’”

  “Did you shoot?”

  “I had to fire a shot.”

  “Tell me what you did.”

  “I just shot over it. I was not about to kill somebody. Even if they were already dead, I would not shoot into anybody. It is very simple. In my life, all my life, you shall not kill, and I did not.”

  “Did you see anyone push people into the pit?”

  “No. They were dead when I got there.”

  “Did you hit anybody?”

  “No way.”

  “Did you believe,” Clark asked, “you personally had done anything?”

  “I personally didn’t shoot anybody. I personally did not, nothing more than what the Germans ordered me to do, but I didn’t shoot at anybody, dead or alive.”

  Later, Clark asked, “Have you ever had any hatred or ill will toward Jewish people?”

  “Oh no,” Reimer replied.

  “Have you ever persecuted any Jewish people?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Have you ever hated any group of people, African Americans or gypsies or Jews or anybody?”

  “No way, no. You are supposed to love all the people.”

  “Did you ever hurt any person from the time you became a German prisoner until the end of the war?”

  “No,” Reimer replied flatly. “Never.”

  IT HAD BEEN an astounding few days in court watching the exchanges between Reimer and his lawyer, and finally Ned Stutman stood up and walked to the front of the room. He could feel the stares of the survivors who had come to watch Reimer, to search his face for answers, as if truth lurked behind frown lines.

  “You should get an electric chair!” a woman had called out the day before when Reimer stepped down from the stand, carrying a batch of legal folders. Reimer did not reply.

  After ten days in court, the air in the room felt flat and stale. Stutman drew in his breath and focused on the tremendous task at hand. Cross-examining a defendant was never simple, but Reimer was nearing eighty, with stooped shoulders and a cough that had developed after hours on the witness stand.

  “Is it fair to say that you believed that during your entire time at Trawniki, you were a prisoner of war and were treated like a prisoner of war, with no rights whatsoever, who could be executed?” Stutman asked. “You believed that when you were at Trawniki, you believe it now, and you believed it in the fifty intervening years, is that correct?”

  “That’s correct,” Reimer replied.

  “Whatever your assignments at Trawniki, you believe you were always in the status of a prisoner with no rights, who could be executed at will and was ordered to do various things?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you believe that when you were doing the guard duty in Lublin that you have described, it was only because you were a prisoner and were ordered by the SS to do that?”

  “Right.”

  “And your testimony in this court has been that sometime in late 1941, you went into the office in Trawniki permanently, never to have an outside tactical assignment again. Is that correct?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Since you have told Judge McKenna and all the rest of us that you were a prisoner under the threat of execution, ordered by the Germans, even the lowliest German could order you to do whatever they wanted, is there any reason to believe that you told any immigration official anything different?”

  “No,” Reimer said, appearing confused. “I don’t see.”

  Stutman produced the US Army Counterintelligence Corps report drawn up before Reimer immigrated to the United States, describing Reimer’s whereabouts during the war.

  “It says, ‘Between 1942 and 1944, interpreter at the Gruczyn sawmill in Poland.’ Were you ever an interpreter at a sawmill in Poland?”

  “I don’t think so,” Reimer said slowly. “I don’t recall it.”

  “Right below that statement is another. It says, ‘1944 to 1945, interpreter at the fortification projects at the Vistula River.’ Do you recall what this is referring to?”

  “No.”

  Stutman was seeking to highlight one of the most significant inconsistencies in Reimer’s story. If Reimer had been a so-called Nazi prisoner, why would he lie about his activities and whereabouts on his immigration documents?

  “You have testified in this court that you were in Warsaw in 1943, correct?”

  “Right.”

  “So you couldn’t have been in Gruczyn and Warsaw at the same time, correct?”

  “No. That’s why I said I agree. It’s incorrect.”

  “Do you have any way at all that you can explain how this statement got on your signed statement…in November 1951?”

  “No,” Reimer answered. “They were general statements.”

  “This seems to me to be a…specific statement, not a general statement,” Stutman pressed. “I am asking you again, can you explain in any way how this statement appears on your signed statement?”

  “Those are not my words. Those are not my statements. They only got in there by suggestion. I don’t know who.”

  From the back of the courtroom, someone shouted, “Why you sign?”

  “Let me just stop for a moment, please,” Judge McKenna interjected. “I understand that those things cause very painful memories for people.…However, this is a court of the United States. We cannot have people shouting things out.”

  Stutman went on. “While you were telling various American officials during the period of your immigration that you were a prisoner of the Germans, treated like a prisoner with no rights, who could be executed at will, did you ever tell anyone that you were permitted to travel home from Trawniki on two occasions unattended?”

  “No. That didn’t come up.”

  “You state that you were a prisoner during the entire time at Trawniki with no rights, but, in fact, you were paid, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you state that you were a prisoner at Trawniki with no rights, who could be executed at will, who carried weapons from time to time. Am I correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  Satisfied, Stutman turned to the ravine shooting. Again, he would focus on Reimer’s shifting accounts, starting with the size and nature of the operation. “Now in your testimony in this court…you stated it was a small pit. Do you remember how you described the size in 1992?”

  Reimer was quick with a reply. “When I was asked in ’92, over the years, this had grown in my head. I even said we went to exterminate a labor camp in ’41. Number one, there was no labor camps in ’41. Number two, exterminate means gas or like the extermination camps. You didn’t go with nine rifles to exterminate a labor camp. It was absolutely all made up in my mind.…I actually have been suffering by these things that I had seen, you know, so that’s why I exaggerated everything, and it took me a while to put it all together.”

  “I want to ask you a simpler question,” Stutman said. “Do you remember how you described the size in 1992?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you state how you described it?…You said it was a big hole?”

  “Big ravine.”

  “And looked like it was dug by a bulldozer?”

  “Right, and they didn’t even exist, bulldozers at that time.”

  “Yes, that’s quite right. But you said it was a big hole?”

  “It was all made up in my mind. It had grown over the years.”

  “Now you testified in this court that there were not even a dozen people in the pit when you arrived there.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you remember the number that you gave to me in your deposition?”

  “Less than ten probably. Maybe a few.”<
br />
  “You said there were twelve in your deposition.”

  “Well, how would I know? Did I go down and count them?” Reimer answered, sounding irritated. “It’s impossible.”

  “Do you remember the number that you gave in 1992?”

  “I said forty to sixty.”

  “Now, in your testimony in this court, you stated that you didn’t know why you were there or the identity of the people.”

  “No, I didn’t. We didn’t know.”

  “If I may,” Stutman said, “I would like to play for you a segment of this tape from ’92 so you can hear what you said.”

  “Well, no, I know it’s all wrong what I said in ’92, so I want you just to realize that.”

  Stutman ignored the comment. At the prosecutor’s table, Ellen Chubin stood up and turned on a large recorder. The voices of Eli Rosenbaum and Reimer filled the courtroom.

  “Mr. Reimer, in your own words, tell me about the incident, whatever you can remember.”

  “We stayed in a barrack someplace outside of Trawniki, where, I don’t know. I think it was a platoon of us. They all woke up. We all woke up and they were all sent to exterminate a labor camp.”

  “How many Jews were killed in this action?”

  “Forty, fifty, sixty; I don’t know.”

  “Did the Jews have to dig their own ditches, their own graves?”

  “It was a big hole. It could not have been dug by hand.”

  “Now Mr. Reimer,” Stutman said, “who stated that the men were going to exterminate a labor camp?”

  “Well, you heard me say that.”

  “The word ‘exterminate a labor camp’ originates with you. Mr. Rosenbaum asked you, ‘Tell me in your own words what happened’ and the words were, ‘We were all sent to exterminate a labor camp.’…How did you learn about exterminate a labor camp at that time?”

  “Nobody told me. It grew in me over fifty years. And I made it a labor camp.…I had heard this over the years and until ’92 when I was asked about it, then I pull it all together.”

  “I see,” Stutman said. “Did you ask anybody where these people had come from?”