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Professor journeys to Germany to explore war trials |
| By
Deanna Woolf |
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Sep 22, 2005 |
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| Memorial area where a synagogue once stood in Breisach, Germany |
"What immediately strikes you is the utter emptiness," said Dr. Michael Bryant, peering over the photographs of parking lots and bricked courtyards. In each picture there is a marker — sometimes a street sign or a plaque — that bears the word "synagogen," German for "synagogue." These are the only reminders of where Jewish houses of worship stood before they were wiped out in one evening of violence.
It was Nov. 9, 1938 — "Kristallnacht," the "Night of Broken Glass" when Germans attacked and destroyed Jewish synagogues, businesses, schools and homes. Police officers and town officials stood by and watched as property was razed or burned to the ground. While they evaded prosecution at the time, Bryant wanted to know what happened to these people once crimes against Jewish citizens were tried after World War II.
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| Dr. Michael Bryant |
For the past two summers, the assistant professor of history and criminal justice has traveled to Baden-Würrtemberg, Germany, to research 100 postwar trials related to the Night of Broken Glass. Concentrating his research on archives in Freiburg and Karlsruhe, Bryant has found that "initially, we see an earnest desire to prosecute. But, at the same time, Germany is trying to be a country again and move on." Contractors, electricians, police officers and even a mayor were indicted in the trials. "But they hardly did any time," Bryant explained. "They were convicted, but were given very lenient probations ... they were quickly recycled back into society."
This project is the latest manifestation of Bryant's fascination with Germany and Nazi trials. His interest was first piqued more than 15 years ago, when he was a law student studying in the country. "I am a bibliophile, and in my wanderings, I came across a book by Ernst Klee, who made a career by investigating the euthanasia link to the Final Solution," he recalled.
The euthanasia program began in 1938 and refers to the Nazi government's efforts to kill all mentally ill patients. Bryant said many people referred to them as "life unworthy of life" and "burdens on the German people." Gas chambers were used to murder the patients.
Euthanasia was in many ways a prologue to the Final Solution, the plan to exterminate all Jewish people, according to Bryant. "It provided the technical know-how, it provided them with trained people who kept items hush-hush, and it provided them the opportunity to think in practical terms," he said. The gas chamber technique and the people who carried out the euthanasia were later used in concentration camps.
This interest developed into his doctoral dissertation and the forthcoming book, Confronting the "Good Death" (2005), in which Bryant went one step further to look at how euthanasia crimes were tried following WWII.
He found that U.S. officials were concerned about defending their sovereignty from external intrusion. Euthanasia acts were crimes committed under government orders — it was a domestic issue, and U.S. officials could not interfere without setting a precedent that could some day be used to justify others' intervention in U.S. affairs. So American officials, in order to advance and sustain their power, "made the theory that the euthanasia program was done to free up nurses and doctors and medical facilities to supply and support the German forces," Bryant said. "This allowed them to make it an international issue crime, and thus prosecutable under international law. At the same time, this theory enabled the U.S. to prosecute an essentially domestic program without fear that their jurisdiction over it could be used later to interfere with American sovereignty."
While Bryant believes Germans have handled the reconciliation of their past well, he has found sore spots still remain. In the town of Waldkirch, some students began investigating the history of one of the mayors. "He was a member of the order police that were used in paramilitary tasks. Later, information came out that they were complicit in the killing of Jews," Bryant said. While the students were researching, "the people in the town were quite upset. They tried to get them to stop. They didn't really want them stirring up the past."
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