The trial in Munich of John Demjanjuk, already the source of as much anguished moral perplexity as any in memory, became even more unsettling on its postponement yesterday. The decrepit old man accused of herding almost 30,000 Jews into the death chambers of the Sobibor camp had developed a fever resistant to medication, the judge accepted, and was unable rather than unwilling to appear in court...
...The greater questions than that of his guilt, however, are perhaps whether justice of any kind is served by trying him now, a few months short of his 90th birthday and apparently close to death; and if so, whether the desire for justice or for vengeance is the paramount motive for the trial...
...Perhaps the best to be said of this trial is that by reducing the observer to agonised bewilderment over whether it should be held at all, it faithfully reflects and reinforces the unique incomprehension occasioned in us still, and God willing always, by the episode in which it was born.
Mr. Norman,
The essence of justice is that it is universal, unrestrained and applicable always. That is what to be just is.
Of course, maybe Jews don't count as a just category for justice or who would agonise over a Jew?
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