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These kinds of stories pop up from time to time. The latest:
A 93-year-old man who was deported from the US for lying about his Nazi past was arrested by German authorities on Monday on allegations he served as an Auschwitz death camp guard, Stuttgart prosecutors said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/06/german-police-arrest-auschwitz-guardThe problem is that the man claims he worked as a cook the whole time and was not involved in the murderous activities there. This is where the case becomes a bit more troubling:
But the case is now being pursued on the same legal theory used to prosecute former Ohio carworker John Demjanjuk, who died last year while appealing against his 2011 conviction in Germany for accessory to murder on the grounds that he was a guard at the Sobibor death camp.Under the new line of thinking, even without proof of participation in a specific crime, a person who served at a death camp can be charged with accessory to murder because the camp's sole function was to kill people.
What are we to think about this - that someone could be prosecuted solely for working at a place without potentially having been involved in any of the atrocities there? The hunting down of ex-Nazis by the Simon Wiesenthal center has given me mixed feelings. On one hand, if a person was involved in horrible crimes they need to know that they must pay, and time will not hide their actions. On the other hand, tracking down 90-year-old men and dragging them off to be publicly tried and imprisoned seems almost like a way of "rubbing it in their faces". I have a hard time believing that these people, even if they did participate in the crimes in some way, are retiring in satisfaction or reveling in their past careers. For those who believe in divine justice, people will be held accountable regardless of whether or not they are caught before they die.Thoughts?
I don't quite know what to make of the increasingly quixotic attempts to prosecute people who might have been Nazis. I find it both sickening and amusing at the same time. :-
If it can proven they were directly involved with abuses, then I would have no problem. But this guy didn't seem to be, he was just living his life. As long as they are not habitual criminals or neo-nazi gangleaders, then they should just leave them be.
Quixotic because if they are going after a cook then they really are reduced to picking the low-hanging fruit because they got the big players long ago and now they are going after people who were at best in their early 20's and in positions of zero responsibility.
They are at it again. GERMANY ARRESTS 3 AUSCHWITZ GUARD SUSPECTS The lengths the Germans will go to to prove their credibility as Nazi haters is unbelievable. Outside of fanatics who thinks going after these elderly men serves justice?
I know we've talked about this topic before, but there's something that I still don't get. If certain actions were legal under the laws of a nation at one point in time, upon what grounds are they now illegal? I fully understand that legality does not equate to morality, but I don't think that is the prevailing view in the West. Have German politicians officially adopted the view that the moral law is higher than human-made law? I would like to know what the European view is on when people should stop following the law of the land and follow their own moral consciences. Also, was there not some resolution that came out of Nuremburg that gave legal pardon to low-level Nazi figures?
You would have to ask Aeth about the European position on whether morality trumps law. I have a decidedly American view of the whole thing, and a conservative American view at that. Many of my German friends think I am some kind of barbarian because I don't swallow the kool-aid and follow the pacifist, sheeplike party line that passes for free thought in modern Germany.I believe there was a blanket amnesty for low-level Germans that had completed the de-Nazification process. However, I think the prevailing view in most of Europe at the highest levels is that a no only lasts until they get around to it again like they did with the EU constitution.
That story about the three guards arrested is the result of the “Operation Last Chance” campaign launched by the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center aimed at tracking down the last surviving Nazi war criminals, bringing them to justice and offering rewards up to 25,000 € for useful information.The fact is that, 70 years after, the number of survivors both victims and executioners are disappearing by natural laws of life. I hardly understand the reasons for this "last chance operation". Although the victims via the Wiesenthal Centre are unwilling to give up and still expect anyone who harmed, killed or even was involved in the Holocaust to be chastized until the last.The big fishes have been caught or are dead but not hiding anymore, now the smaller ones are targetted until no more. Just like in fishery businesses.I wonder if one day I will be prosecuted because I walked in the wrong street a long time ago.The centre says his (John Demjanjuk) conviction set a precedent allowing German prosecutors to reopen hundreds of investigations and prosecute former camp guards as accessories to murder, even if there was no proof the defendants personally killed anyone. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-23428997So it goes.....seventy years later. And 2023? Might we have yet another poster......one more last extra chance? Well....yeah. Heck, there might even be a poster in 2033. http://schnitzelrepublic.blogspot.be/2013/07/the-german-poster-last-chance.htmlSpät aber nicht zu spät - Late but not too late
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