Is this was Demjanjuk has to look forward to--?
During his trial,
eleven Jews testified under oath that they personally saw Walus murder Jews, including several children. After a costly and bitterly contested four-year legal battle, Walus was finally able to prove that he had actually spent the war years as a teenager quietly working on German farms. A lengthy article copyrighted by the American Bar Association and published in 1981 in the Washington Post concluded that "... in an atmosphere of hatred and loathing verging on hysteria, the government persecuted an innocent man."
We now know that witnesses at the main Nuremberg trial gave false testimony. Perhaps the most obvious were the
three witnesses who ostensibly confirmed German guilt for the Katyn massacre of Polish officers. (note 63)
Stephen F. Pinter of St. Louis, Missouri, served as a US Army prosecuting attorney from January 1946 to July 1947 at the American trials of Germans at Dachau. Altogether, some 420 Germans were sentenced to death in these Dachau trials. In a 1960 affidavit Pinter stated that
"notoriously perjured witnesses" were used to charge Germans with "false and unfounded" crimes. "Unfortunately, as a result of these miscarriages of justice, many innocent persons were convicted and some were executed." (note 64)
A tragi-comic incident during the Dachau proceedings suggests the general atmosphere.
US investigator Joseph Kirschbaum brought a Jewish witness named Einstein into court to testify that the defendant, Menzel, had murdered Einstein's brother. But when the accused pointed out that the brother was, in fact, sitting in the courtroom, an embarrassed Kirschbaum scolded the witness: "How can we bring this pig to the gallows if you are so stupid as to bring your brother into court?" (note 65)
August Gross, a German who worked as a civilian employee for the U.S. Army at the Dachau trials, later declared: (note 66)
The American prosecutors paid professional incrimination witnesses, mostly former criminal concentration camp inmates, the amount of one dollar per day (at that time worth 280 marks on the black market) as well as food from a witness kitchen and witness lodging. During the recess periods between trial proceedings the US prosecuting attorneys told these witnesses what they were to say in giving testimony. The US prosecuting attorneys gave the witnesses photos of the defendants and were thereby able to easily incriminate them.
A young US Army court reporter at the Dachau trials in 1947, Joseph Halow, later recalled the unwholesome situation:
The witnesses in the concentration camp cases were virtually all of the sort we court reporters termed "professional witnesses," those who spent months in Dachau, testifying against one or another of the many accused... It was to their economic advantage to testify, and many of them made a good living doing so. As one might well imagine, the motive of the professional witnesses was also one of spite and revenge... In many instances their vengeance included relating exaggerated accounts of what they had witnessed. It also included outright lying.