[2019] Citizen 865

by Debbie Cenziper

  The limousine sped through the morning haze and stopped moments later in front of a classic Soviet-style apartment complex, squat and imposing. Much to Rich’s surprise, the elevator in the building was working. This way, the prosecutor gestured, and they walked silently to the apartment where Nikolai Leont’ev had lived for years, fixing watches and clocks to earn a meager living.

  Leont’ev opened the door and stared at his American visitors, extending a terse greeting. He led them into a kitchen that held a single table and four plastic chairs. There was no offer of tea.

  The former Trawniki guard was eighty years old, but he looked much younger. Such a gentle descent into old age, Rich thought, for a man who had once served the Nazi killing machine.

  Leont’ev had spent nine years in a Soviet gulag after the war. He was eventually released when Joseph Stalin died and the Russian government opted to amnesty thousands of convicted traitors. In 1964, as a Soviet witness in cases against other Trawniki men, Leont’ev had provided the account about Reimer and the shooting at the pit near Lublin.

  Stutman settled into a chair. Rich noticed that he made no move to shake Leont’ev’s hand. Instead, Stutman made introductions and advised Leont’ev that he was obliged to tell the truth.

  “I’m with the United States Department of Justice,” Stutman began, speaking slowly to give the interpreter time to convert the words to Russian. “My office works on matters related to people who entered the United States after the war and became citizens—”

  Leont’ev interrupted. “We didn’t have anyone. As far as I know, all these people were not Americans.”

  “I know,” Stutman answered. “The people we investigate are people who became Americans after the war.”

  Leont’ev shook his head. “I have no way of knowing.”

  The man was on edge, clearly. In front of an American prosecutor, he would offer nothing freely.

  “I have come many miles to speak with you just to get truthful information about what you saw during the wartime period and some people that you may have known during that period,” Stutman said evenly.

  He turned to the Trawniki camp. “Did you have officers over you at Trawniki?”

  “Of course.”

  “And were these officers Germans from Germany or were they Russians of German nationality?”

  “How would I have known?” Leont’ev shot back. “How would I know?”

  “When you were at Trawniki, were there other Russians there?” Stutman repeated.

  “I don’t know. There were thousands. How many? I don’t know but there were thousands of them.”

  “And when you got there, didn’t the Germans train you to become Wachmanner?”

  “What do you mean the Germans gave us training?”

  “Did they teach you German commands?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I really don’t remember.”

  Stutman looked dubious. “You don’t remember? Did they teach you how to do guard duty?”

  “I’ve already said I really don’t remember a thing. How many years ago was it? I just don’t recollect.”

  “When you were in Trawniki, do you remember the names of any of the people who trained you?”

  “No.”

  “Among the ethnic Germans, do you remember anyone by the name of Reimer?”

  Leont’ev paused. “Darned if it isn’t familiar.…I think I remember somebody…with that [name], but I can’t say anything bad about him. He was a good guy.”

  “A good Wachmann?” Stutman said. Rich doubted that Leont’ev could detect the hint of sarcasm in the question. “What do you remember him from?”

  “He was a nice fellow. He was a good guy. He wasn’t the type to hand out punishment. He never said an unkind word. Just a very nice person.”

  “Was he one of those who trained you?”

  “He did train us.”

  “And when you went to Lublin, did your trainers go with you?”

  “I don’t remember. As far as I know, they were already there when we got there.”

  “Do you remember how long you were in Lublin?”

  “Probably two or three months.”

  “What was your unit doing?”

  “The Jews had been rounded up and put into camps. They were now empty and we were guarding these empty buildings.”

  The account, Rich knew, solidified OSI’s suspicion that Reimer had spent many weeks in Lublin.

  “Do you remember something else happening while you were in Lublin?” Stutman asked. “A shooting in a forest?”

  Leont’ev paused. “Damned if I…if that happened, I can’t say. I don’t remember.”

  Stutman pushed the 1964 eyewitness statement across the table. “Let me help refresh your memory on this. Mr. Leont’ev, we have a statement that was given to us by the Russian government. I want to show it to you. It has signatures at the bottom of each page.”

  “What is this, by the way?”

  “This is a statement that you gave to the Russian authorities?”

  Again, Leont’ev paused. He looked at his visitors. “Would anyone like a smoke?”

  “They’re not good for you, Mr. Leont’ev,” Stutman quickly replied.

  Stutman pointed to the statement. “I would like you to look, Mr. Leont’ev, and tell me—”

  Leont’ev shook his head. “Can anyone remember what happened thirty-four years ago?”

  Stutman decided to read an excerpt of the statement. “I want you to listen, Mr. Leont’ev,” Stutman said, “and tell me is it true or is there anything in this statement that’s not true or correct. Because if anything isn’t true, I want you to tell me.”

  He read aloud. “In about March 1942, Mikhail Korzhikov, Ivan Khabarov, and I, Leont’ev, were in a detachment numbering perhaps ninety people who deployed from Trawniki to the city of Lublin. We were escorted there by…Reimer, Ackermann, Traut, and others.”

  “Who’s Traut?” Leont’ev interrupted.

  “I’m asking you,” Stutman said.

  “I don’t remember Traut. Traut I don’t know.”

  Stutman went on. “After we arrived in Lublin, we were quartered in three barracks near a church in the town itself. In Lublin, we guarded some houses of the former Jewish ghetto that contained property.”

  “That’s true,” Leont’ev said.

  Stutman continued, moving on to the shooting in the forest.

  AKKERMAN, RAJMAR, and BEK used their rifle butts to prod the victims and force the fear-crazed people to stand up in groups of five to seven people…. After having finished off all the adults and children, we returned to the road and the escort unit gave us the next group.

  “Okay. I’m going to stop now,” Stutman said. “Mr. Leont’ev, is there a part of that story that is not true?”

  “It’s correct. It’s true. That did happen. I remember. It did happen.”

  “And at the shooting, Reimer, Ackermann, and Beck, they were there?”

  “Yes. I think they were. I think they were.”

  “This kind of event probably stays with you in your memory,” Stutman said.

  “But I want to say that these three did not do the actual shooting. It was ethnic Germans who did the actual shooting.”

  “In your statement, it says that [supervisors] Ackermann, Reimer, and Beck used their rifle butts to prod the victims and force the fear-crazed people to stand up in groups of five to seven. Then they marched them to the pit, and, along with the Germans, they shot those people.”

  “As far as I can recall, as far as I know, the Germans did the shooting.”

  “What did the [supervisors] do?”

  “They were the convoy. They brought them to the pit.”

  “I see. And the [supervisors] were Reimer, Ackermann, Beck?”

  “Yes. They were in charge. They were the commanders of the convoying.”

  “And they were the ones who were giving you orders?”

  “Yes, it was they, of course, who ordered us
. They gave us our orders.”

  “And after the first group was shot, the Jews that followed must have known what their fate was. Did any of them try to run away?”

  “They were executed. There was nowhere to go. They had no possibility of escape.”

  Listening to the exchange, David Rich wondered whether Stutman was absorbing the details as a prosecutor or as a Jew, whether there was any way to be one and not the other. Stutman did not appear angry. Instead, he paused.

  “Are you warm?” he asked Leont’ev. “Do you want to take a break? Have some tea? You didn’t eat. Are you okay? If you get tired…”

  “No,” Leont’ev replied. “I’m fine.”

  Stutman went on. “How come you never got promoted?”

  For the first time, Leont’ev laughed. “Why would they promote me?”

  “Was Reimer with you the whole time you were in Lublin?”

  “He was.…You know this was something that should have been addressed immediately after the war. At such a late date, who needs to know any of this? Who is interested?”

  “The United States didn’t want people to immigrate who had assisted the Nazi persecutors in any way,” Stutman replied.

  “It’s been how many years?” Leont’ev asked. “How many years since the end of the war?”

  “Well, it’s been a long time, Mr. Leont’ev,” Stutman answered. He took a deep breath. “But there are still people who remember.”

  THE TRAIN BACK to Moscow did not leave until six p.m. To kill time after the interview the prosecutor from Penza suggested a tour of the city. As the limousine scaled a winding road high above town, he grinned and pointed to an island in the middle of the Sura River.

  “That,” he said, “was once a strategic target for the Americans.”

  Rich nodded and smiled, knowing that Stutman would say very little. He was lost in thought, rehashing Leont’ev’s grudging confirmation that Reimer had led a platoon of Trawniki men to the pit shooting and that he had spent weeks in Lublin during the ghetto liquidation. Both admissions were critical to OSI’s case.

  The next day, Rich and Stutman sipped vodka in a warm dining room looking toward Red Square. The Kremlin glowed green and yellow against the night sky. It was a majestic sight, and in the silence Rich stared at the twinkling lights and thought about the work that was waiting back in Washington.

  THE JUDGE ASSIGNED to hear the Reimer case in US District Court for the Southern District of New York was Lawrence McKenna, nominated to the bench by President George H. W. Bush.

  After OSI filed the denaturalization case against Reimer in 1992, Neal Sher had gone to New York to meet in chambers with the judge and defense attorney Ramsey Clark for an initial status conference. Sher had returned to OSI, looking grim.

  In case after case, the unit had faced intense scrutiny from judges about the use of documents supplied by the Soviet Union. Turning to his legal team, Sher recounted a question from McKenna, who had grown up in New York City during the height of the Cold War and to Sher had appeared skeptical about the upcoming case against Reimer.

  “I don’t suppose,” Sher recalled the judge asking, “that I can convince you to leave this poor old man alone?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Work of Murder

  New York City

  1998

  The federal courtroom was packed. Ned Stutman expected that. The New York dailies were on the story, and the New York Jewish Week had headlined an exposé: “The Last Nazi Trial of the Century.” From the prosecutor’s table in the front of the room, Stutman could see journalists squeezed next to Holocaust survivors, some wearing armbands bearing the Star of David.

  Jakob Reimer sat at the defense table in sneakers. He was wearing a cardigan sweater even in the August heat, a savvy move, Stutman decided, given the allegations against him. The seventy-nine-year-old defendant looked frail and friendly, an average guy in comfortable American footwear.

  Later, an OSI attorney would study a sketch of Reimer in the crowded courtroom and remark, “Who do you think is the Nazi and who do you think is the Holocaust victim?” Based on appearances, it was impossible to know.

  Stutman had come to court with eighty-five German documents and 132 written statements from victims, witnesses, and Nazi perpetrators, assembled by Peter Black, Barry White, David Rich, and the other OSI historians. Four survivors were waiting to take the stand, including men who had witnessed the ghetto liquidations in two of the cities where Reimer once served. The records and witnesses would help detail Reimer’s sweeping stretch of deployments during the two most lethal years of German rule in Poland.

  But Stutman was worried. The case was already off to an unfortunate start.

  The Office of Special Investigations had asked for a summary judgment, a ruling against Reimer without the need for a hearing. The evidence was among the strongest in the history of the Nazi-hunting unit—a confession, two eyewitness accounts of murder, and rosters and records that placed Reimer in the three ghettos where tens of thousands of Jews were whipped, beaten, shot, or forced onto trains bound for killing centers. But Judge McKenna had denied the request.

  Stutman wasn’t the kind of lawyer to leave anything to chance. He had asked Eli Rosenbaum to skip the hearing and stay behind in Washington, knowing that the director of OSI would likely draw attention from Reimer’s veteran defense attorney.

  “You’ll be a lightning rod for Ramsey Clark,” Stutman had warned.

  Stutman hated distractions. He wanted the judge focused squarely on the facts, the legal arguments for stripping Reimer of his citizenship fifty years after he had settled in the United States. Stutman intended to prove that Reimer had participated in mass murder not as a grunt or as a passive bystander but as an active, armed Nazi collaborator. So loyal to the cause that he had earned promotions and vacations. So loyal that he would receive citizenship in Nazi Germany when the dirty work was done.

  In the quiet courtroom, Stutman pushed back his chair and stood up. In Washington, he had earned the title of “funniest lawyer” in a local comedy contest. “Humor,” Stutman liked to tell the young members of his legal team, “is how we get by.”

  But in court, in stiff dress shoes and ties, Stutman didn’t joke. Some prosecutors liked to fill up the room, bold and loud, performing for a judge or jury. Stutman spoke softly, carefully. Mass murder didn’t need dramatizing.

  He glanced briefly at historian David Rich and the three lawyers sitting next to him at the prosecutor’s table, then turned to face the judge.

  “In Operation Reinhard, which lasted from March 1942 until December 1943, the Nazis killed an estimated 1.7 million Jews,” Stutman began. “The Nazis could not have done so without Trawniki training camp, the men who trained there, and men like Jack Reimer to train and lead them. The government will show the Trawniki training camp was, in every respect imaginable, a training ground for persecution and murder, and the defendant was one of its first teachers.”

  Across the room, Reimer bowed his head, shielding his face with his hand. Stutman knew that Reimer appeared vulnerable, an underdog with a single lawyer. It was sound legal strategy, a subtle way of pointing out that Stutman was part of big government, sitting at the prosecutor’s table with the other lawyers, Rich, and a massive stack of documents.

  “We have few opportunities,” Stutman went on, “as a nation or as individual citizens to express our absolute abhorrence of persecution on the basis of race, religion, or national origin. The Congress of the United States seized one such opportunity when it passed the Displaced Persons Act and declared that individuals who assisted in persecution or misrepresented wartime activity would not be eligible for a visa to come to this country. Congress declared in no uncertain terms that this country would not and will not be a haven for those who assisted in persecution.

  “There were only a limited number of visas back then, your Honor, and Mr. Reimer took the visa of a real victim. Jack Reimer assisted in persecution.…Moreover, he
trained others to assist in persecution as well. Then he misrepresented his whereabouts and activities during the war. On all of these bases, we ask the court to denaturalize Jack Reimer.”

  The judge turned to Ramsey Clark, who was nearly a decade younger than Reimer and a good head taller, with a narrow face and a G-man’s haircut, brown hair swept back off his forehead.

  Stutman had read up on Clark’s involvement in the defense of Karl Linnas, the Estonian concentration camp commandant who had been deported to the Soviet Union over the protests of Pat Buchanan and others. While awaiting trial, Linnas died of natural causes in a prison hospital in Leningrad. Clark had flown to the Soviet Union to see Linnas a day before his death.

  Clark had defended other high-profile and controversial clients, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, sued after terrorists hijacked a cruise ship off the coast of Egypt. Gunmen had shot and killed Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewish man from New York who had been celebrating his thirty-sixth wedding anniversary. Klinghoffer was thrown into the sea in his wheelchair.

  Clark stood up and looked at the judge.

  “So the question is: why are we here?” the defense attorney said. “I think the evidence will show that Mr. Reimer learned his religion well, although he was cut off from it, that he lived that religion and does to this day.…He is a kindly man. You couldn’t say he has had a happy life. Early on he told me—I didn’t understand it at first—but early on he said that this is his test and he will face it alone.

  “I said, ‘Your family’—that is, his children, his wife, his preacher, pastor they called him, these people. He said, ‘No. This is my test.…I have been through this.’ He said, ‘I went through it alone.’ He said, ‘They weren’t with me.’ He said, ‘I am not subjecting them to this.’ And here he is. I read in the paper this morning that this was the day that Columbus sailed from Palos for the Western hemisphere for the first time, and I hope that in this trial, we will find America again.”