by Helen Burko
“After Nuremberg, this is the most important trial, and Mathilda Krause should be branded as a dangerous war criminal and receive the death sentence,” wrote another paper.
In this fashion, various newspapers expressed their rage at Jacob’s decision to defend his wife, the former Nazi spy.
But there were other newspapers that were understanding and wrote, “Barder shows great kindness in defending his wife even though she is a criminal. For Barder, she is, first of all, his wife, whom he loves and who, apparently, loves him.”
“Forgiveness has been one of the superior traits of the Jewish race throughout the centuries,” wrote another newspaper. “For to forgive means to raise oneself above all evil. To forgive takes far more courage than to avenge. To wreak vengeance on a beaten foe is to repeat the evil of that criminal.”
*****
Before the trial, the organization for survivors of the concentration camps sent a letter to Jacob and tried to persuade him to retract his decision to defend Mathilda Krause. The following is an excerpt from the letter:
“In defending the Nazi spy, you are insulting the names of those who fought against Nazism, profaning the graves of those who gave their lives in the struggle against the Nazi animal with the cry of ‘Vengeance!’ on their lips. It is not too late to reverse your decision. We are aware of the fact that every criminal has a right to be defended in a democratic society, but you should not be the one to defend her for these reasons: First of all, because you are a Jew; second, because you yourself suffered so much in this war; third, because you are not doing this in a professional sense, but as a volunteer—for reasons none of us can understand or name. It is beyond human understanding and an insult to our feelings.”
The letter ended emphasizing their plea:
“In the names of the millions who were massacred by the Nazis, we beg you not to appear for the defense in this trial, for we will not be responsible for anyone who takes it upon himself to take vengeance on the defense attorney rather than the criminal.”
In a letter, former inmate Noami Persitz wrote:
“The curse of all the mourning mothers will fall upon anyone who even utters a word in defense of the murderers, the barbarians, who brought this holocaust upon millions of people and tried to enslave and exterminate countries and nations.
“Never will we forgive anyone who defends them, even before our wounds have healed. Hundreds of generations will pass, and the mark of Cain will not be erased from the foreheads of the criminals! Whoever retains a drop of feeling, a crumb of honor, must not defend these barbarians, who feel they have done nothing wrong and have not even publicly expressed their regret.
“There is no price Germany can pay to recompense the harm she has caused to humanity. She will remain in debt for eternity, and together with her, the world that saw and remained silent!
“There are no good Nazis, even though this Nazis is your wife. Anybody who voluntarily defends them is recognized as one of them, and his sentence should be the same—death!”
A young girl of nineteen wrote:
“I came to America all alone after spending the war years in a bunker and surviving by a miracle. All the men tell me I’m beautiful, have a lovely figure, and have all the feminine attributes, and many of them say I am lovelier than the Nazi, Mathilda Krause. If you a need a loyal and devoted companion, I am ready and willing, but first you must remove yourself from the defense of the Nazi criminal! I am waiting impatiently for your reply, Natalie Goodner.”
“Your house and your life are in danger if you persist in defending that Nazi criminal, for whom a sentence of death would be too good,” wrote a man who signed himself “A Partisan from the Wolyn Forests.”
One of the organizations named “The Guardian of Morals” wrote the following to Jacob: “If you, the honorable attorney, a man who spent the war years in the camps, justify, according to the newspaper articles, Nazism, it is no wonder the murderers tortured and killed so many. It is only to be regretted that you were not one of them!”
*****
Jacob received many letters like these on the eve of the trial, after the newspapers were filled with articles defining his decision to defend Mathilda Krause, his lawful wedded wife.
The trial was the sensation of the day. Newspapermen and photographers surrounded his house and attacked him with questions like: How did he meet Mathilda Krause? How he did he love her? What caused him to defend her after she had deceived him by pretending to be Jewish?
Jacob had only one answer. “What caused me to defend her, I will reveal at the trial.”
No wonder, then, that everyone awaited the trial in great suspense. Jacob’s parents were very dejected by the fact that this “obsession” had taken hold of their son and he was defending that woman.
“My dear son,” his mother said to him. “This woman deceived you, and you aren’t to blame for bringing her to America, for no one, under these circumstances, could have discovered who she really was.”
“There’s no denying she is beautiful.” His father also tried to persuade him to reverse his decision. “But even if you love her very much, you shouldn’t defend her knowing she belongs to the same race that massacred millions of our people.”
“If your reason for defending her is to show the world how talented you are,” joked Eddie Adler, Jacob’s friend, “you are going to harm yourself so badly in this trial that no one will ever employ you again to defend them. But maybe because most of your clients are criminals anyway, defending one more criminal and this time your wife…”
“If you think that because of your work with criminals, you have the right to desecrate the honor of your parents and millions of people, you are wrong,” said his uncle, his mother’s brother, Professor Irwin Gottheim, who came especially from Florida to speak to Jacob. Jacob and Mathilda had visited him soon after they arrived in America.
Jacob answered all the pleas and insults. “Believe me, not her beauty and not for love of her, and not because my work is defending criminals and not because I have gone out of my mind, none of these are the reason I am defending this woman who has admitted to being a former Nazi.”
“Which means you are also aware she was a Nazi, and in spite of that, you intend to defend her?”
“Yes, I intend to defend her with all my strength,” Jacob announced. “And I must emphasize that I’m not doing this because I love her or because she’s beautiful, as they have written in the newspapers, or that all others believe. No! I know I could probably find, here in America, a woman as beautiful and talented as this Nazi spy. I have already received a letter from a beautiful nineteen-year-old proposing to take Mathilda’s place if I relinquish the defense.” Jacob smiled bitterly. “I don’t intend, as my friends say, to publicize myself, because I realize how unpopular my decision is. I would never seek publicity at the expense of a tragedy, especially since the tragedy is also mine. The newspapers have already given me a great deal of publicity, but if I reversed my decision, I would be given a great deal more publicity and it would be more favorable.
“My God!” cried Jacob. “Who needs all the sensationalism and all these headlines in the newspaper? Those who remember me from before the war, when I used to appear in a criminal trial, know I was the least concerned with receiving publicity or cheap sensationalism. Those are two words I erased from my vocabulary a long time ago: publicity and sensationalism!
“My profession,” he continued, “has given me the opportunity to learn a lot about the nature of the people I defend. I think you have not forgotten the trial of John Haimes, who killed his lover and was given a relatively light sentence because of his reasons, which I clarified at the trial. And perhaps you recall the trial of James Patterson, who killed his mother and was allowed to inherit and serve a life sentence instead of a sentence of death. And there are many more like those I have defended. You can believe me, however, I was never convinced that my trials changed any of society’s prejudices, but if I were able h
ere and there to prove the innocence of some person, I was content, because the law in my opinion is nothing but a purge for the chronic illness that humanity is suffering from—a sickness that needs radical treatment, and not a palliative one.”
“My dear friends,” he said to his friends like Eddie and Richard, “who, more than you lawyers, should know a verdict is dependent on the cunning of the lawyer or the prosecutor who makes a career for himself in referring to precedents and paragraphs in the law books and various facts and statements. In this way, he influences the judge and the jury, but many times I have seen the judge sympathizing with the defendant after handing down a stiff sentence, but they calm their conscience by saying, ‘The law is the law!’
“What am I talking about? My decision is to appear in defense of this woman whom I really should be prosecuting. After I experienced the atrocities of the war and saw death before my eyes and suffered hunger and deprivation in the camps… Especially for those reasons I decided to defend her.”
“Who is to blame, my son, but those who caused this horrible war,” his mother contended. “The Nazis and the Germans!”
“Who is to blame, you ask?” Jacob replied quietly. “I will answer that at the trial, for if I try to explain now, it would take too long. I don’t want to repeat myself, and I think this trial will save me the bother of writing a book about my convictions after the war. Now I will have the opportunity to say what is in my heart, and it will be published in any case. Maybe it will teach someone a lesson and help others to reach a conclusion.”
Jacob gave answers like these and others resembling them to the newspapermen, who gave him no rest with their questions on the reasons for his decision to be the defense attorney in this trial.
“Is Mathilda going to plead guilty and be sentenced by the judges? Or will she plead not guilty and be tried before a jury?”
Jacob answered calmly, “Mathilda Krause is not going to plead guilty.”
“Do you believe, Mr. Barder, that your wife, Mathilda Krause, who escaped under the false name of Rachel Kimmelman and deceived you all the time, is innocent?”
“Without a doubt!” he retorted.
“Do you believe that she was not at Majdanek and the woman who recognized her, Hannah Rubin, is lying?”
“No, Mathilda Krause is a former Nazi spy, and she appeared at Majdanek with her lover, the Gestapo officer Karl Krackel.”
“In spite of that, you believe she is innocent?”
“Yes, I believe so. She is innocent!”
“What are your reasons, Mr. Barder? How can we understand them? How can we judge her? Is she a former Nazi spy and responsible for her actions, or is Hannah Rubin mistaken?”
“No, Hannah Rubin is not mistaken.”
“Despite all this, you have decided to defend her? This is a fact that is enraging all the former inmates of concentration camps and the public as a whole.”
“Yes, despite all that.”
“Can we conclude from your explanations or your decision to defend her that you are defending Nazism?”
“I definitely don’t justify or defend Nazism at all. Only lunatics could justify it. But Nazism is just a later stage of the disease caused by other factors in the first stage. Nazism is the hook on which the public hangs all the evil, when the truth is that other factors are more to blame.”
“What are these other factors, Mr. Barder?”
“That I will reveal at the trial in my closing statement.”
“Do you believe, Mr. Barder, that if a man kills another, he should not face the death sentence?”
“I don’t think the sentence is the means to rectify the crime. Every criminal knows he may be punished before he commits the crime. There are prisons for the criminal, so why does he commit the crime?”
“Do you think, Mr. Barder, that we should abolish the laws, the punishments, and the jails because they don’t cause the criminal to refrain from committing the crime?”
“That’s not what I mean. The laws are a relative term, just as the crimes are a relative term. I’m not against the laws because they are customary or dry and flexible. I just don’t think that the laws are punishing the real criminals.”
“What are you referring to?”
“That is the subject I will talk about in my closing statement at the trial.”
After these interviews and others like them, articles appeared in the following morning’s press, analyzing the reasons for Jacob’s defense of Mathilda Krause. Some of the articles construed his remarks to show that the lawyer was against all laws and opposed the right of the court to judge criminals, and that after spending the war in Russian camps, he had become an anarchist.
Others wrote even more radical statements and hinted that Jacob should be disbarred. For how was it possible for a lawyer to appear as a representative of the law while he was of the opinion that the law was unjust and, in any case, the criminals were innocent? In his opinion, the courts were not courts, the verdicts were not verdicts, and it was all chaos.
Journalists who remembered Jacob from before the war recalled that, during the beginning of his career as a defender in criminal cases, he had often talked about abolishing law in trials.
Some of the reporters wrote that Jacob was probably suffering from a fast-spreading complex—that of losing his lawyer’s sense of ethics—brought about by his years of suffering. Therefore, he should be disbarred.
As a result of all this unfavorable publicity, Jacob was brought before the Morals Committee of the Bar Association to examine his actions in Russia during the war.
“We live in a democratic country,” stated Jacob before the committee, “and every person has a right to voice his convictions. I have a right to talk against trials.”
“It is impossible to allow you to be a representative of the law while you are opposing the law,” said the head of the committee. “We are, first of all, an association made up of members whose commitment is to juridic ethics. Your statements that the law is unjust, while you are appearing as a member, are an insult to the association!”
“After you hear my closing statement in the trial, you may judge me, but not by the sensational press, which doesn’t understand my statements and misconstrues them.”
In Jewish circles, they looked with compassion on Jacob, as one would on an insane person, whose great love had driven him out of his mind—his passion for a former SS girl who held him in her clutches so tightly was so great that he cared nothing for things sacred or the honor of his parents or his own career.
A young attorney, who thought he saw an opportunity to make some publicity for himself, offered his services to aid Jacob in the trial, but Jacob saw through him and understood his intentions and so refused his offer.
“I thank you, but this isn’t a matter of publicity for furthering your career. I’m sorry many people think that I’m out of my mind or that I wish to turn my personal tragedy and the tragedy of millions into publicity for myself. That is not why I’m defending the accused, and I won’t let anyone else use this opportunity to create publicity for themselves out of it.”
The threats didn’t deter Jacob and neither did the insults or the good advice. He read the articles about himself and didn’t reverse the decision he had made to defend Mathilda Krause, even after many sleepless nights of meditation and consideration and after studying and analyzing the last war.
So it’s little wonder the courtroom was packed the first day at the preliminary hearing. Many of the spectators were women, and some were students.
Among those present were many lawmen who wanted to hear Mathilda Krause plead guilty or not guilty. Also present were many former inmates of the concentration camps and other survivors who had arrived in America not long ago and had not even recovered yet from all they had undergone. Their faces still bore the marks of wounds that hadn’t yet healed. Their arms bore tattoos of numbers that screamed out defiantly. Their faces were pale, and in their eyes could be seen the anger that ha
dn’t found an outlet.
The police were very careful about who they allowed to enter and guarded all the entrances and exits because of all the threatening letters Jacob had received in the last few days.
His parents also had been warned, and his father, under pressure from his wife, told the police that his son’s life was in danger.
Jacob’s parents, who couldn’t stay home while their son was trying such a sensational case, came to the preliminary hearing, as did his friends and acquaintances and his former in-laws.
When the Levines, Jacob’s former in-laws, read in the paper about the affair, they were shocked, and Evelin Levine remarked to her husband, Oscar, “That’s what the camps did to people. They became strange and corrupt, and I am beginning to suspect Jacob had something to do with the death of our loved ones!”
These words found a willing place in Oscar’s heart, as he still felt keenly the pain of the tragedy and the loss of his only daughter and only grandchild, and he was still searching for a way, logical or not, to alleviate his suffering.
With these ideas running through their minds, the Levines now felt not only anger, but hate for Jacob, and avoided meeting his parents, as the war had made their only son a wicked and inhuman monster. They remembered he told about what the prisoners had done to each other in order to save their own skin. So it was no wonder a man like that was able to love a Nazi spy and even bring her to America.
In the same front row sat Marie Barder’s brother, Professor Gottheim, and his wife, who had come from Florida to hear what their nephew would say. In their opinion, a demonic spirit had taken possession of him. Gottheim explained the phenomenon according to his profession as a psychoanalyst. He comforted his tearful sister, who was waiting to see her son who had lately not even come to visit them.
Also in the courtroom were Eddie Adler, Eddie’s wife Leonora, Richard Waite, and Richard’s wife.
On the other side sat Hannah Rubin, who would appear at the preliminary hearing, although in the trial, she and the other witnesses would have to wait outside until they were called. At her side was her escort from the evening in the theater lobby, who had helped her hold Mathilda after Hannah had definitely recognized her. On her other side sat a lovely, blonde woman who continually whispered to Hannah. All three had their eyes fixed on the door beside the judge’s bench through which Mathilda would be brought by the guards.