At 7:00 a.m. the city is quiet, the sky still dark, but the plaza in the Nymphenburger Straße teems with TV and radio trucks, their generators humming. Hundreds of journalists and spectators stand waiting outside the courthouse, bundled against the cold. A rumor circulates that press accreditations have been issued far in excess of what the courtroom can accommodate, and the jostling begins. A policeman shouts unintelligible instructions as reporters grouse about the staggering absence of organization. Instead of cordons and an orderly queue, the police inexplicably have created a crude funnel, its mouth leading to a single doorway. A sign marks off the Demjanjuk Sammelzone—the DEMJANJUK COLLECTION ZONE.
The fact that a crowd including Jews and a number of Holocaust survivors is being shoved in the direction of a single narrow portal creates resonances that can't be ignored. Perhaps the Germans themselves find reassurance in the disorganization. The SS was terrifyingly efficient. Not so the Munich police. Incompetence signals benevolence. See, we have changed.
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