A psychology professor who recently testified in Jerusalem as an expert witness for the defense in the trial of accused war criminal John Demjanjuk, will play the same role at the trial of Rien De Rijke, which opened Tuesday in The Hague.
De Rijke, 68, is accused of war crimes during the years 1942 and 1943 when he served as a “kapo” at the Erica concentration camp in Ommen, in eastern Holland. He is charged specifically with extreme cruelty to inmates, especially Jewish prisoners, causing the deaths of some of them.
Professor Willem Wagenaar, an experimental psychologist who teaches at the University of Leyden, will appear for the defense and is expected to testify, as he did at the Demjanjuk trial, that witnesses cannot possibly give reliable accounts of events that occurred more than 40 years ago.
The De Rijke trial probably will be the last war crimes trial in the Netherlands. It is assumed here that most Dutch war criminals on the wanted list are either dead or will never be found.
De Rijke already was serving a prison sentence for black marketeering when he was transferred to the Erica camp and made a kapo — a prisoner assigned to guard other prisoners. He later became chief kapo.
When Allied armies liberated Holland, he fled to West Germany, where he lived many years.
He was arrested last year while visiting his sister in a town near The Hague.
One difficulty in the trial is the uncertainty whether De Rijke is a Dutch or West German national. He may be stateless.
While he has admitted mistreating prisoners at the camp, he denies he caused any deaths.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
