60 No. 77 JUSTICE The significance of the Demjanjuk verdict extended beyond the specific case. It provided a legal template for prosecuting the thousands of surviving former camp guards, administrators, and other personnel whose roles, while not involving direct killing, were essential to the Holocaust's implementation. Prosecutor Kurt Schrimm noted that the decision opened the door to pursuing justice even in cases where specific evidence of individual crimes was lacking. As characterized by Johannes ten Cate, the circle of perpetrators was indeed enlarging.19 The Post-Demjanjuk Era: Renewed Prosecutorial Vigor The Demjanjuk verdict catalyzed a remarkable surge in Holocaust prosecutions during the 2010s and early 2020s. The Central Office, located in Ludwigsburg, intensified its efforts to identify and prosecute surviving perpetrators before age and time made such accountability impossible. This period saw numerous cases brought against aging individuals including near-centenarians, leading to recurring characterizations of many of the accused as “the last Nazi.” The cases of Hans Lipschis, Oskar Gröning, and Reinhold Hanning demonstrate the rapid acceptance of the expanded and still expanding scope of prosecution in Germany. Hans Lipschis was a 93-year-old Lithuanian former member of the SS who had seen considerable service at Auschwitz. He had been granted “ethnic German” status in 1943 and, after the war, immigrated to the United States.20 Like Demjanjuk, Lipschis was not a German citizen; he had served as a member of the SS and had been a resident of the country before his emigration to the U.S. A significant difference in the Lipschis case was that he served at Auschwitz which was not a single-purpose death camp. However, his service was at a section of Auschwitz, Birkenau (Auschwitz II), which was, in fact, a purpose-built extermination facility. Lipschis insisted that he was not a criminal because he had served only as a cook but, applying the Demjanjuk precedent, his service at a death camp was enough to bring the charges. Although both Demjanjuk and Lipschis served in the SS, the former was a participant in the killing apparatus as a guard with direct contact with those to be murdered as they were in the process of being murdered. Further, at Sobibor, “it was clear that anyone arriving would not be leaving again.”21 That point, that those sent to Sobibor were sent to die, was more difficult to prove at a hybrid camp such as Auschwitz. Moreover, Lipschis’s service as a cook was a decidedly more subsidiary function. Ralf Dietrich, the lead prosecutor in Stuttgart, understood that. “We have to prove more than just that he was present.”22 Dietrich had to prove that Lipschis knew of and, because of that knowledge, was a part of the criminal enterprise of the camp. To do so, Dietrich’s staff created a digital model that offered panoramic views of the camp from each of the guard towers. This was critical because while Lipschis’s duty as a cook was clear from the camp records, what was also clear was that cooking was not his sole task. Lipschis was also assigned periodic guard tower duty in his off-shift hours. Using the detailed diary of Lipschis’s commander as well as other documentary evidence from the camp, the prosecutors were able to reconstruct with certainty the dates and times that the accused was serving in a guard tower, with views from the guard towers that included the railhead and siding (Judenrampe), the crematoria smokestacks, and the tell-tale smoke. Detailed German documents indicate that 10,510 people arrived at Auschwitz during Lipschis’s time on guard tower duty and did not survive the camp. The Lipschis case is evidence of the further widening of the aperture of responsibility to include even those with clearly ancillary roles. 19. Johannes Houwink ten Cate, “The Enlargement of the Circle of Perpetrators of the Holocaust,” JEWISH POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW cited in the Jewish Center for Public Affairs: Israeli Security, Regional Diplomacy, and International Law, December 2008, available at https://jcpa.org/article/the-en;largement-of-the-circle-of-perpetratorsd-of-theholocaust/ 20. Nick Lester, “‘Former Auschwitz guard’, 93, charged with being accessory to murder as German prosecutors continue attempts to bring low-level Nazis to justice before they die,” THE DAILY MAIL (Sept. 26, 2013), available at https:// www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2434034/Nazi-war-criminals-Hans-Lipschis-Former-Auschwitz-guard-93-chargedaccessory-murder.html 21. Melissa Eddy, “Chasing Death Camp Guards with New Tools,” N.Y. TIMES (May 5, 2014), available at https://www. nytimes.com/2014/05/06/world/europe/chasing-death-camp-guards-with-virtual-tools.html 22. Id.
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