Vengeance, Russian

The concert hall of Minsk's Red Army House was packed, as for the premiere of a Shostakovich symphony. From the balcony seven baby spotlights painted the orchestra pit an eerie yellow. There was a nervous clearing of throats. But no baton was raised. Tonight the program was a trial of German war criminals, and the conductor was the public prosecutor.

In the spotlights' glare, the 18 uniformed prisoners (including three generals) looked jaundiced and afraid. They had reason to be. The prosecution charged them with responsibility for destroying 209 Byelorussian towns, 10,000 collective farms, 1,150 hospitals, and for killing unnumbered thousands of Soviet citizens.

Among those in the dock was Heinz Hermann Koch, 32, a foolish grin on his heavy, sensual face. Koch had once been a Stuttgart hairdresser. "But I didn't like being a hairdresser," he told the court. "I wanted women, drink, money. So I joined the Gestapo."

Russian justice has a flair for getting people to admit most anything. It got Sensualist Koch to admit shooting at least three victims at each mass execution as an example to his men, asphyxiating 30 people in a gas chamber, sending 2,500 to Maidanek (knowing it was a death camp), personally executing more than 5,000 men, women & children in three years.

A half hour later he denied these statements. While he spoke, one of the defense lawyers doodled on a white pad. When Koch had finished, the doodle stood out in heavy black lines, clearly visible from the press box up above. It was a gallows.

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