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and, with the assistance of Trawniki
men, most were sent to their deaths
at Treblinka during a less-than-two-
week period in the fall of 1942.
While Reimer maintained that he
mainly served as an office adminis-
trator in charge of distributing pay-
roll to the Ukrainians, the prosecu-
tion's main witness said it would
have been impossible for Reimer to
have remained unaware of the mur-
ders.
"As soon as the death camps were
up and running, Sobibor in May
1942 and Treblinka in July 1942,
Trawniki men brought back takes of
what they saw there," said Charles
Sydnor, a historian specializing in
the Nazi era.
Memory propelled
many of the several
dozen spectators to the
grand cherry-wood and
bronze-decorated
courtroom each day.
Many were elderly.
Some were survivors
themselves of Nazi per-
secution. Some, like
Bernie Alexander, were
young.
The 29-year-old,
middle-school guid-
ance counselor, who
wears a black kipah and lives in
Queens, was the only spectator who
attended the trial every day.
"I felt it was important to go to
show that even people of my genera-
tion are not forgetting," he said in
an interview in the courthouse cafe-
teria, as Reimer and Clark ate their
lunch just two tables away.
For the prosecution too, the core
issue has been memory — and the
importance of not forgetting that
within the vastness of the murder of
6 million Jews lie the specific crimi-
nal acts that made it possible.
The U.S. Justice Department's
Office of Special Investigations has
tried 107 Nazis and their collabora-
tors — stripping 59 of their citizen-
ship — since its creation in 1979.
The current memory of defendants
is important, but the Nazi-hunting
unit does not rely on it alone.
OSI's 10 attorneys and seven staff
historians piece together history as
they work.
It is put into place one document
at a time as papers are culled from
the depths of archives in the former
Soviet Union and Germany, and
from testimony in other Nazis' trials
in the United States and those coun-
tries over the last 35 years.
They also travel great distances to
add additional small pieces to the
mosaic.
In Reimer's case, the lead prosecu
tor, Edward Stutman, and an OSI
historian journeyed to the Ural
Mountains to interview another for-
mer Trawniki guard who, in a 1964
Soviet war crimes trial, testified that
Reimer had led his troop on a
killing mission near Lublin in which
250 Jews died.
In his ordinariness — then, as a
handsome man in his 20s and now,
as a somewhat wizened man of 79,
whose thick brown hair has turned
white — Reimer and his story are
remarkable.
As an ethnic
German, born to
German parents and
raised speaking
German alone, his
ability to translate
between Russian
and German made
him valuable to the
Trawniki guards.
Reimer was pro-
moted to the highest
rank that a
Ukranian could
achieve, Sydnor tes-
tified. The Nazis also rewarded him
with two medals, one for bravery,
which was not often done for
Trawniki men, he said.
By his own admission, Reimer
trained a company of Ukranian
recruits, teaching them basic
German military commands. But the
prosecution said he also taught them
how to shoot.
In a sworn interview with OSI
officials in May 1992, Reimer
admitted shooting a Jewish man in
the winter of 1941-1942.
The man was nearly buried by 40
to 60 corpses in a pit just outside
the Trawniki training camp, near
Lublin.
•
In that interview, Reimer said he
had overslept that day. When he
came late to it, he saw the man
pointing to his head, and, at close
range, "finished him off."
In a 1997 deposition, Reimer said
he had shot over the pit of dead
bodies in order not to hit anyone.
But on the stand recently, his recol-
lection seemed to shift once again. "I
don't know why it comes into my
head that somebody moved or pointed
to his head. It's possible" that someone
did, Reimer testified. El
The core
issue in the
Reimer trial
has been
memory.