Former camp workers in German courts 2021

Discussion in 'The Third Reich' started by Dave55, Feb 6, 2021.

  1. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

  2. Blutto

    Blutto Banned

  3. alberk

    alberk Well-Known Member

    While it may seem ridiculous to some I would like to say this: I am German and I had a friend in Israel, he was German-Jewish, born in 1927, and was the one member of his family who survived the Holocaust. His father was shot in the Ghetto of Riga, his sister and mother were taken from Riga to Auschwitz, his aunt was shot in Riga-Kaiserwald in 1944. Kaiserwald was evacuated when the Red Army approached, the inmates were to go to Stutthof. Many were executed in Riga-Kaiserwald at that point because they were deemed unfit for the transport or not fit enough for more slave work, i.e. they were over 30 years old.
    They all never had the chance to reach the age of 95 - they never lived the post war life that lady lived, probably a comfortable life in a relatively affluent country like West-Germany. Maybe she had the pleasure of having a family and raising children - unlike the victims. They died not only at the hands of SS-murders, they also died because someone typed lists of deportees, because the German Railways took them to places (and charged the SS a fare for that) etc. Somebody processed all that; maybe far away from the camps... maybe he or she knew something, maybe he or she cared, maybe not. But somebody who worked in a camp telling me that she did not know anything... because her window faced the other way - come on!
    After having had the chance to live to 95 she now faces a reckoning. My friend (he died in 2012 in Haifa) knew and appreciated Germans who helped his family - and he came to visit Germany very often after the war. But would he say that somebody involved in the process of mass murder should be left alone? Only because she is 95? That would be for him to answer ...
    He and his family paid a high price - I think this lady will need to pay a price. It will be a reasonable one in a country with a fair system of justice. Somebody else - it says in the article - received a two year suspended sentence. Ok! Let the court look into her case now...
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2021
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  4. ltdan

    ltdan Nietenzähler

    alberk is right, of course
    This is nevertheless only a moral fig leaf - Too little, too late.....
    In the 1950/1960s there were countless acquittals - because former Nazi judges had to judge Nazi and Wehrmacht war criminals.
    The unspoken rule was: "Legal according to the law at the time".
    Of course - it was precisely these judges who had created such legal foundations in the Third Reich.
    But it is nice to see that 70 years later efforts are being made to introduce cultivated legal practices.:oops:
     
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  5. papiermache

    papiermache Well-Known Member

    Deleted: will post links when I've got them right !
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2021
  6. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    According to German newspapers the 95 year old woman was under age when working as a secretary. so, she will be sentenced according to under age law.
     
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  7. papiermache

    papiermache Well-Known Member

    There was a Polish case about Stutthof. See the ICC website.

    UNWCC News Digest X published April 26th, 1946. 29.3 MB download.
    https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/8d8896/pdf

    Page 14: "16.4.46. Warsaw: Sixteen Hitlerite hangmen from the Stutthof Concentration Camp will be tried by the Special Criminal Court in Gdansk (Danzig). The trial will begin on 25th April, and will last until 18th May. Among the accused are five women, the so-called SS Frauen. All the accused tortured the inmates of the Stutthof Concentration Camp between 1939 and 1945. This trial will be the greatest of all trials against the concentration camp torturers. Journalists from all over Poland will be present."

    UNWCC News Digest XI published May 13th, 1946. 20 MB download.
    ICC Legal Tools

    Page 7: "25.4.46 Warsaw Radio reported from Danzig: The trial was opened at the Special Court on April 25th, against 15 officials of the Stutthof concentration camp. Nine of the accused are men, and six women. The indictment charges them with participation, from September 1939 onwards, in ill-treatment and murder of inmates of the camp. 80,000 of the 120,000 inmates of the camp perished."

    UNWCC News Digest XIII published June 14th, 1946. 21.1 MB download.
    https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/d17d7f/pdf

    Page 15 : "Radio Warsaw stated ( ?.6.46) that on the previous day, the Court had pronounced sentence; 11 of the 15 defendants were sentenced to death, 2 to imprisonment; 2 were acquitted."
     
  8. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96


    Let me add the following:
    In our local POW camp was a 17 year old sensor. I was lucky to speak to her years ago. Because she was good in French and English Anneliese was ordered straight from school and had no option.
    She actually visited ex Internees from the Channel islands after the war. it was not a concentration camp though, but in 1943we had German Jews from Bergen-Belsen to be exchanged for German POWs held by the Allies.
    Stefan.
     
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  9. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

  10. WiltsHistory

    WiltsHistory Member

    I would say that it is never to late to charge someone involved with the Holocaust, regardless of their age. Just a pity the Germans and Allies didn't do it 70+ years ago...

    "Speaking at her home in a retirement community, the woman also said that she wasn't aware of mass poisonings or other acts of genocide — in part because her office window faced outward from the camp."

    ... I mean, really?
     
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  11. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    [​IMG]
     
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  12. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    Will follow up on the court's ruling later. Stefan.
     
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  13. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96





    The legal authorities in Germany are about to finally take them to court this year.

    Male and Females ranging from 95 to 101 years of age. One of the problems the authorities are facing isWwill these suspects be able to follow what is happening to them and how co-operative are they.

    Stefan.
     
  14. Blutto

    Blutto Banned

    As I wrote once before, the only winners in this nonsense are lawyers. Many of the architects escaped scot free, now they chase minnows.
     
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  15. Charley Fortnum

    Charley Fortnum Dreaming of Red Eagles

  16. jonheyworth

    jonheyworth Senior Member

    I agree with you all . I’m no Nazi lover as a quick search of my posts will show but this now smacks of the a desperate attempt to been seen to do something PC to atone for the years of failure when the big boys SHOULD have been brought to account .

    Worse , it shifts sympathy off the victims to these old dodders who , whatever they did in 1945, it really is too late to do anything to now .

    and as said , where do you draw the line ? Is the bloke who worked for DRB who loaded the coal into the tender of a loco that took a train to a camp an accessory to genocide ?
     
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  17. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    Rabbi Sacks

    Do you think it’s ever possible to forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust?

    Here we come to a major confusion, and even very great minds can make this confusion. And let’s describe how it has surfaced after the war. It surfaced in the form of a story by Simon Wiesenthal. Simon Wiesenthal was a survivor of the Holocaust, and he wrote the following account. During the Holocaust, his work division was sent one day to do some work in the grounds of a German military hospital. A nurse came out of the hospital, and said to Wiesenthal, “Are you Jewish?” He said, “Yes.” She said, “Please come up to the ward. Somebody needs to speak to you.”


    He went up, and there was a young German officer who was dying. And the officer said, “I need to tell you this story. I was sent to the Russian front. We came to a village. Out in the square in the village, had been rounded up around 200 people. Women and children, including young children, babies and very elderly people. And they were all Jews. And there was a house. A truck came up filled with cans of petroleum. And these were taken out and put throughout the house. Then we were told we had to take all these 200 people and somehow squeeze them into the house. And then we were told we had to remove safety pins from our hand grenades and throw them through the windows of the house. I stood there watching 200 people burn to death. And I am about to die, and I need you to forgive me.” And Wiesenthal wrote, “I couldn’t. And I left him. I heard that the next day, he had died.” This troubled Wiesenthal for years. Did he do the right thing, or should he have forgiven?

    Topic 6: Forgiveness and the Holocaust - Rabbi Sacks



    https://www.jstor.org/stable/27504230
     
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  18. BarbaraWT

    BarbaraWT Member

    Yes, much truth in what you say. It’s a complex issue. For example, some survived in the camps by volunteering to sort the clothes taken from people. They would find food or valuables in the pockets and linings that could be bartered. Are they complicit?
     
  19. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    After the war 80% of German judges in Western Germany were known to have served under the judicial system of the Third Reich.

    Postwar, it was a problem for the German judiciary for there was no such option as immediate replacement of NS jurists by any who had practiced in a democratic system of law for the past 12 years.
     
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  20. alberk

    alberk Well-Known Member

    Just read in the news that the 96year old disappeared. Went into hiding rather than appear in court. Maybe she`ll start a new life in Argentinia... or where ever one goes these days to escape justice. Venezuela? North Korea? Syria also used to be popular with old Nazis.
     
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