Richard Rashke - Useful Enemies

“Mrs. Radiwker, you indicated that you were born in… Poland,” O’Connor continued. “Is that correct?”

“I was born when it was still Austria. Later it became Poland. And now it’s Russia.”

“What you are saying now is that your place of birth was in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire?”

“Yes.”

“But you indicated that, in fact, it was Galicia. Is that true?”

“I was born in the Galicia region ,” Radiwker clarified.

“But the place of your birth, ma’am, was that in the Ukraine?”

“A Ukrainian village.”

“Do you remember the name of the village?”

“Laski.”

“Can you tell me those schools or institutions that you studied in?”

“At the time of the First World War, my parents fled from the Russians and moved to Vienna. I had my primary schooling in Vienna. My secondary schooling was in Stanislawow [near Laski]…. University studies at the school at Yagalonite University in Krakow. And I hold the degree of master of jurisprudence.”

“Can you tell me when you graduated with your master’s degree?”

“In 1930.”

“What languages do you speak?”

“Polish, Russian, Yiddish, German, and Hebrew, of course. Not brilliant Hebrew—but still… Once upon a time I had full command of Ukrainian, but I haven’t used it in so many years.”

At this early point in his cross-examination, O’Connor realized he was in trouble. Radiwker was a seasoned attorney with more courtroom experience than he had. Aware of what he was trying to do in his cross and why, she made it a point to be clear, precise, and specific. And she answered his questions without hesitation and with great self-confidence, leaving O’Connor in a bind. He had committed the defense to memory-testing. His best hope was to continue the test, rattle her, wear her down, find a weakness, or create an opening he could exploit.

Radiwker testified that, after receiving her master’s degree, she practiced law in Poland until the German occupation in September 1939. It was an opening. Was it possible that she collaborated with the Germans as an attorney? If so, it would be an interesting twist. A Nazi collaborator testifying against an alleged Nazi collaborator.

O’Connor went fishing. He asked Radiwker to describe her legal career in Poland. She quickly and decisively dashed his hope. Before the invasion, she told the court, Poland severely limited her employment options as a Jew. Although she could practice law, she could not become a judge unless she converted to Christianity. And when the Germans occupied Poland, she couldn’t practice law at all.

“Can you indicate to us, ma’am, what you were doing then?” O’Connor asked in frustration.

“I sat at home until the seventh of November, 1939, [when] I crossed into the Russian occupied zone.”

Radiwker went on to explain how she and her husband fled farther east into Belorussia in front of the advancing German army in an attempt to stay three steps ahead of the Einsatzkommandos who were killing Jews with the help of Belorussian collaborators like Radoslaw Ostrowsky and Emanuel Jasiuk. The Soviets eventually drafted her husband into the Red Army and he ended up defending Stalingrad under the command of General Vlasov. For some reason, possibly because he was a Jew, Moscow ordered him to fill out a background questionnaire. When he naïvely reported that he had once served as an officer in the Austrian army and the Polish reserves, Moscow sent him to Siberia.

“When did he come back?” O’Connor asked.

“He didn’t return, he didn’t return,” Radiwker said, close to tears. “He died there.”

Judge Levin interrupted. “You are questioning on a subject which is sensitive,” he chided O’Connor. “Would you kindly be as delicate as possible?”

O’Connor went fishing in another pond.

“Did you at any time make contact with any officials of the Soviet government?”

“No!”

“And at the time of the Russo-German war, what did you do?”

“I was accepted into a lawyer’s association,” Radiwker said.

Radiwker explained that the association was a legal cooperative in which an administrator found the clients, parceled out the work, collected the fees, and paid the lawyers.

“You were practicing law in an area controlled by Soviet forces, is that true?”

“Until 1957. Then we were permitted to move to Poland.”

“Can you indicate the type of law that you were practicing?”

“Whatever was available. Criminal cases. Civil cases,” Radiwker said. “My first case was to defend a Jew who had sold chickens. He bought the chickens for twelve and he sold them for sixty. He told the court frankly that he made a good profit.…. He got five years in prison.”

Having failed to show that Radiwker had a weak memory, collaborated with the Nazis, or worked in an official capacity for a communist government, O’Connor once again changed his tack. He tried to establish that as a lawyer in the Soviet Union, Radiwker had willingly participated in a corrupt legal system that deprived citizens of their human rights.

“As a defense attorney, ma’am, under the Russian rule,” O’Connor asked, “do you feel that you had the full opportunity to represent your client?”

“I always had the courage to defend my client.”

“Do you feel there was justice in those courts?”

“I couldn’t say there was not justice.”

“In order to practice law before Russian judges, did you have to go to Moscow at any time? Or did you have to receive any special training?”

“No, I did not go to Moscow,” Radiwker said in response to the first part of O’Connor’s double question. To the second part: “I simply read their codex. It’s not a very large one.”

“You never practiced any law [dealing with] crimes against the state or anything to do with the military code of justice. Is that true?”

“There were special lawyers… authorized to deal with cases such as these,” Radiwker said. “It wasn’t for me to do it. Nor did I want to.”

O’Connor failed to tire Radiwker, break her, fault her memory, or implicate her in any compromising activity. To make matters worse, Judge Levin was losing patience with the endless stream of biographical questions, some of which were so meandering that Radiwker forgot the question by the time O’Connor finished asking it. Levin kept interrupting O’Connor to say that this question was irrelevant, that question unclear.

Radiwker immigrated to Israel in 1964. O’Connor asked her about her subsequent career. “Mrs. Radiwker,” he said, “when you came to Israel, ma’am, you indicated within a fairly short period of time you obtained employment. How did you get that job?”

“I took my daughter and my [second] husband to Auschwitz, just as one goes to visit a grave… to achieve separation from relatives,” Radiwker said. “Having seen what went on there, I decided that if I have the opportunity, I will devote my life to work that deals with the crimes of Nazis.”

Both Radiwker and her second husband had lost relatives during the Holocaust. The Nazis killed his first wife and only child. While still in Poland, she had heard about an Israeli police unit investigating Nazi war crimes and learned that they needed jurists and investigators fluent in German. Once settled in Israel, she applied for a job and, given her legal background, the police hired her immediately.

Radiwker’s testimony about Auschwitz evoked memories of lost family and images of gas chambers and ovens. It brought tears to her eyes. O’Connor asked for a break.

“I do not see a need,” Judge Levin said.

“I can see the witness in tears ,” O’Connor objected.