05-13-2011, 11:27 AM
rjmacs wrote: Upon hearing his account and reflections on this, a court would be in a better position to decide his fate.
Gutenberg wrote:
He was not a teenaged draftee. He was an adult Ukrainian POW who flipped to the other side. And while many of his Ukrainian compatriots escaped from the camp rather than participate in the slaughter, Demjaniuk stayed. We don't know whether his participation was enthusiastic, but he did indeed participate.
Maybe it was a tough choice for him: Slaughter tens of thousands of innocents, go into a POW camp or try to escape.
But it shouldn't have been a tough choice. Even if he made the initial decision under duress, he had plenty of time to think about it and to change his mind. Instead, he chose to kill people. To herd men, women and children into gas chambers where they were put to death like stray dogs.
Where's the morally ambiguous aspect of that? Should the justice system go easy on him because he could have ended up in a POW camp had he refused to slaughter people?
I'm sure that the court knows his story quite well. I think the court was very lenient upon him.