Greg Dawson - Judgment Before Nuremberg

Irina Ferenzova, the chief guide at the Drobitsky Yar memorial who retrieved my camera from thieves on my visit in 2006, gave me hot tea after my solitary walk through the ravine on a snowy morning—then left her post to get me back to town after my cabbie was a no-show. Gala Dobrovolska, my seatmate on the flight from New York to Ukraine, enlisted her son to drive me to the train station in a snowstorm the night I left Kharkov.

I was welcomed like family at Jewish organizations in Kharkov, and by the students and teachers of School 13, the last school my mother attended before the Nazis arrived in October 1941. An administrator at Kharkov Conservatory dropped everything late in the day to give us a tour. There was no end to the cheerful assistance provided by the young, bilingual staff at the Chichikov Hotel.

Special thanks to friends Alan and Naomi Berger whose book, Second Generation Voices: Reflections by Children of Holocaust Survivors & Perpetrators, helped me better understand the impact of the Holocaust on my own family and the crucial importance of sharing the story with succeeding generations.

I owe a great debt to the readers who came to hear me speak about Hiding in the Spotlight (www.hidinginthespotlight.com) at more than 150 events around the country. Their evident fascination with the history of this overlooked chapter of the Holocaust and a hunger to know more was a major factor in my decision to turn an idea into a manuscript. Once again, as with Hiding in the Spotlight , Pegasus Books publisher Claiborne Hancock took a brave leap in buying the manuscript, and my editor, Jessica Case, provided the go-for-it enthusiasm and astute editorial guidance that made the manuscript all it could be.

Like its predecessor, Judgment Before Nuremberg is animated by the remarkable spirit and words of my mother, Zhanna, who did not hesitate for a moment when I asked her to relive these terrible memories one more time for the benefit of others. And through it all, from inception to fruition, I was sustained and inspired by the love, patience, and creative insights of my wife Candy, who once again helped me push beyond the cold facts of the story to the beating heart.

A

Ahlwardt, Hermann, 78–79

American Heritage College Dictionary , 75

Anielewicz, Mordechai, 55

anti-Semitism, 69–70, 73–81, 97, 108, 234–35, 239, 255–56, 280–81, 338–39

Apple Trees of Drobitsky, The , 208, 346

Arad, Yitzhak, 3, 56, 70, 102, 118, 165, 167, 244, 250, 255, 266, 280

Arendt, Hannah, 139, 140–44, 304, 327

Arshanskaya, Frina, 6, 13, 24, 32–33, 39, 41, 45–46, 60, 88, 181, 196, 208, 242–44, 274

Arshanskaya, Zhanna, 6–7, 11–14, 23–27, 43, 46, 88, 181, 196, 243–44. See also Dawson, Zhanna Arshanskaya

Arshansky, Dmitri, 26–27, 45, 88, 103, 193–96, 213, 343

Arshansky, Sara, 45, 103, 213

Artyomovsk Winery, 152–55

Associated Press, 278, 332, 341

Atlantic Monthly, The , 142, 145

Auschwitz, 18, 27, 48–54, 57–59, 81, 84, 125, 129, 136–37, 145, 160, 219, 228–29, 236–37, 340

Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2, 8, 54

Azerbaijan, 64

B

Babi Yar, 8, 51–54, 57–59, 100, 107, 125, 133, 161–62, 166, 172, 233–34, 284, 342–43

Babi Yar , 208

Bailey, Anne, 103

Balfour, John, 286

Banner, John, 22

barbarism, 92, 110, 117, 121–26, 283, 304, 321

Bazyler, Michael, 265, 270–71, 274

Beautiful Mind , A , 143

Becker, August, 129, 132

Belarus, 59, 64

Belonozhko, N. F., 258

Belushi, John, 218

Belzec, 54, 145, 151

Benigni, Roberto, 151

Sobibor, 59, 219

Berger, Alan, 28, 35

Berger, Naomi, 28

Berkhoff, Karel, 115

Berkshire County Eagle, The , 344

Bespalov, Alexander, 223

Beyond Belief , 336

Biberstein, Ernest, 160, 178–79

Bismarck Tribune (North Dakota), 251

Black Book, The , 104, 281

Blobel, Paul, 107, 133, 159–68, 172–73, 284

Blume, Walter, 86

Blunden, Godrey, 205

Bogancha, Antonina, 244

Bogancha, Evdokiya, 239–43

Bogancha, Nicolai, 241–44

Bogancha, Prokofiev, 239–43

Böhme, Hans Joachim, 177–78

Bolshevism, 70, 85–87, 91, 95–98, 106–8, 119, 171, 255, 281

Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta , 109

Brodsky, Alexander, 116

Brokaw, Tom, 169–70

Bronner, Ethan, 59

Browning, Christopher, 3, 85, 140–42, 145, 175–77

Buchenwald, 336, 340

Bulanov, Mikhail Petrovich, 134, 219, 224–25, 289, 310–15, 324–33

C

Carter, Jimmy, 57

Cask of Amontillado, The, 154–55

CBS, 335, 336

Charleston Gazette (West Virginia), 278

Chicago Herald American , 337

Children of the Holocaust , 29

Christian Science Monitor , 11, 252, 268, 278

Churchill, Winston, 266, 268, 284

Civil War, 71, 99, 215, 235, 337

Clay, Lucius, 21

Cold War, 21, 64, 67, 186, 272–73

concentration camps, 29, 99–100, 115, 132, 151, 165, 175, 191, 194, 280. See also specific camps

Criminal Responsibilities of the Hitlerites , 271–72

Crowe, Russell, 143

Curry, Ann, 9–10

D

Dachau, 34–35, 81, 336, 340

Danilenko, Darya, 224

Dawson, Aimee, 31–37

Dawson, Bill, 19, 198

Dawson, Candy, 30, 34, 37, 41–43, 46, 51, 201, 213

Dawson, David, 24

Dawson, Larry, 24

Dawson, Zhanna Arshanskaya, 6, 19–36, 39–46, 59–60, 65, 93–94, 102–3, 124, 130, 149, 159–60, 167, 185–98, 201–2, 208–13, 216, 227–31, 235–50, 256–57, 261, 274–75, 282, 332–33, 360–61

death camps, 18–20, 57, 61, 81, 84, 145, 151, 164, 219, 256, 318, 335, 340. See also specific camps

“death vans,” 133, 219

Denby, David, 150

Der Sturmer , 79

Desbois, Patrick, 10

Desert Rats , 159

Destruction of the European Jews, The , 54, 75

Doctor Zhivago , 64

Dr. Phil, 169, 233

Dragnet , 151

Drobitsky Yar, 6–7, 8, 12, 45–47, 60, 130, 140, 160, 167, 181, 193–203, 205–10, 213, 216–19, 231, 235–36, 239, 245, 247, 250, 256, 263, 275, 282–83, 289, 332–33, 360

Dunayev, N. K., 321–23

Durbin, Deanna, 278

Dykman, J. T., 267

E

Earl, Hilary, 162, 167, 171

Ecker, Chief, 300

Eichmann, Adolf, 18, 138, 140, 174, 261, 304, 327

Eichmann in Jerusalem , 139, 327

Einsatzgruppen , 10, 20–21, 50–58, 83–93, 106, 127–30, 134–36, 143, 164, 167, 170–76, 249, 255, 266, 281–84

Eisenhower, Dwight, 172–73, 267

Encyclopedia Britannica , 75

Epstein, Helen, 29

Exodus , 29

Extraordinary State Commission, 119–25, 265, 271, 279, 330

F

Fagin, Helen, 54–57

famines, 70, 115

Faraday Society, 116–17

Fascist Terror, 209, 282

Ferencz, Ben, 91–92

Ferrer, Jose, 339

Fiddler on the Roof , 100

Final Solution, 2, 50, 55, 70–71, 142, 156, 164, 177, 180, 327, 336–40

Forster, Norman Paul, 122

Frank, Anne, 26, 58, 187

Frankel, Max, 342

Frankfurter, Felix, 151, 343

Franklin, Tim, 36, 41

Friedman, George, 66, 68

Fuhrerbefehl , 86–87

Fyodorov, Ivan, 123

G

“Garden of Eden,” 144–46, 170, 252, 258

gas chambers, 2, 8, 50, 54, 84, 129–31, 135, 160, 219, 297

gas vans, 131–35, 298, 300–303, 307–13, 319–20