In the spring of 1942, Nazi forces occupying the Ukraine launched a wave of executions targeting the region's remaining Jewish communities. These mass shootings were open, public, and intimate. Although the victims themselves could never testify against their killers, many eyewitnesses could and did identify the perpetrators. Among these communities, three local men from the villages of Serniki, Israylovka, and Gnivan were intimately implicated in such killing operations: Ivan Polyukhovich, a forester in the German-controlled administration; Heinrich Wagner, a Volksdeutscher liaison officer; and Mikolay Berezowsky, a member of the local police force. More than fifty years later, these three men were arrested and brought to trial in Australia for their alleged war crimes. Daviborshch's Cart is more than an account of Holocaust perpetrators who found a safe haven in postwar Australia. It is also the story of the Holocaust in the Ukraine, the War Crimes Act, Nazi policies, and the ways in which future generations translate history into law, archives into proof, and law into justice. Based on a review of previously unexamined historical and legal documents and transcripts, Daviborshch's Cart offers the first critical examination of Australian attempts to bring alleged Nazi criminals to justice.
David Fraser is a professor of law and social theory at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of several books, including The Fragility of Law: Constitutional Patriotism and the Jews of Belgium, 1940-1945 and Law after Auschwitz: Towards a Jurisprudence of the Holocaust.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments A Note on Language Introduction: The Long and Winding Road from Ukraine to Australia 1. History, War Crimes, and Law in Ukraine 2. A Brief Political and Legal History of Australia and Nazi War Criminals 3. Law and History in Australian War Crimes Trials: Ukrainian Foresters, the Shoah, and the Polyukhovich Case 4. Mikolay Berezowsky: The Case of "The Witness Who Knew Too Much" 5. The Story of Daviborshch's Cart: Law, History, Truth, and the Holocaust in Ukraine 6. Translating Law, Translating History, in Australian War Crimes Trials 7. Telling Stories about the Shoah: Perpetrators, Victims, and the Politics of Australian Identity in The Hand That Signed the Paper 8. Law, Memory, and Justice: The Australian Experience Notes Bibliography Index
A study of Australia's attempt in the late 1980s and early 1990s to prosecute three individuals for crimes committed in German-occupied Ukraine
"There should, however, be a much broader audience for this book, for in the interstices of the cases Fraser examines are the ideas of "truth," "justice," "history," and how they interact in court. While it is not exactly a work of philosophy, Fraser's work thus often takes thoughtful and provocative turns that should stir the minds of historians, lawyers, and politicians everywhere." - Timothy Dowling, H-German, August 2012
