Vectors of traumatic memories and mass-mediated representations of the ‘last’ Nazi trial of John Demjanjuk

Abstract

This is an ideological critique of key vectors of memory that could have circulated during the Munich trial of John Demjanjuk. While many members of the mainstream press applauded the efforts of German prosecutors who seemed to be dispensing belated justice to Europe’s ‘second generation,’ the circulation of these select legal vectors left us truncated World War II histories. Moreover, the binary choices that were posed stood in the way of more comprehensive and nuanced studies of Stalinism, Nazi and collaborator culpability.

Keywords:

• John Demjanjuk
• ideological criticism
• Munich trial
• second generation
• vectors of memory

Notes

1. Some of the early work on publicizing the genocidal features of the Holodomor appears in Berkhoff (2004). For background reading on Sobibór, see Blatt (1997), Freiberg (2007), Sereny (1983), Schelvis, (2007).

2. For more on the suffering of these POWs, see Merridale (2006), Edele (2007), Shneer (2005).

3. There a growing literature on the roles that memories and historiographies play in Holocaust trials. See, e.g. Bloxham (2005), Douglas (2006).

4. For background information on Treblinka, see Arad (1987). Contextual material on trains and deportations to the Eastern Front appears in Witte and Tyas (2001).

5. For some helpful general overviews of Demjanjuk’s Munich trial, see Houwink ten Cate (2012).

6. For a primer on Nazi hunting and the search for retributive justice, see Rutledge (2005).

7. see, e.g. Connolly (2009).

8. For a nice overview of the formalistic German reasoning that created difficulties for post-war Holocaust prosecutions see Weinschenk (1976).

9. On Soviet archives and sources of information for trials, see Sorokina (2005).

10. For more on opening day coverage of the Demanjuk Munich trial, see Caniglia (2009).