Mrs Marple
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I think Germany feels the need to continually prove they aren't an anti semitic nation anymore. It feels like a show trial.
I agree with you both - but since my parents escaped the Nazis & Soviet Russians in 1944 - I was interested in this case.
My parents had a lot of friends that ended up in concentration camps....![]()
But definitely people like Irmgard, who were supposed to type documents, were not, initially, told what they were expected to type.
In the camp, I guess, she understood. One can’t be that oblivious to what is going on. Why did she stay? Probably, good salary and ration.
I think you are right in that it very likely that she did not choose her work assignment.
Irmgard was assigned to the concentration camp in 1943. 1943 is the year when the Germans mass mobilized for what Goebbels called "Total War". The Germans delayed mass mobilization because they were initially winning.
Anyways, in 1943, millions of German girls and women either volunteered or "volunteered" to assist in the war effort. As camp support staff such as the defendant were not SS, there is probably a less chance that one volunteered to serve as a typist at such places.
Rather, I strongly suspect that hundreds of thousands of German girls were given brief aptitude tests, then assigned to various parts of the war effort ranging from factory worker to nurses aid, to loading railway cars to typists.
The typists were then sent to where ever a typist was needed that was not on the front lines. Thus, she could well of wound up at the camp as random assignment.
Once assigned to the camp, she probably could have requested a re-assignment- if she really wanted to and was patient. As the war continued to turn against Germany, personnel managers were probably less inclined to entertain typist transfer requests and there was an increased expectation that one stay put.
There may of been other factors as well. By 1944, allied bombers were putting German factories and railyards under heavy attack. Likewise, food shortages were starting to occur in Germany proper (camp was in Poland)- not starvation level shortages, but not very comfortable either.
Thus, putting in a transfer request would risk angering personnel managers and also risk re-assignment to far more hazardous typing pool supporting say, an aircraft factory and then living under far less comfortable conditions.
Thank you, very interesting. Yes, probably this is how it happened. She was so young, how many 18-year-olds would be able to make a rational, measured decision in advancing chaos?
I think honest memoirs about her life and experiences would be so much more interesting than this show trial. All the more so that she is probably one of the very few still remembering the war.
bbm
And, this job likely protected her entire family! Many materials were scarce -- housing, food clothing, gasoline, fuel for home heating & cooking.
Sometimes one family member's job allowed that family access to food and shelter and safety.
Jews, homosexuals, individuals with handicapping conditions were targeted first, but many 'ordinary' Germans and Poles and others found themselves shipped off to camps.
18 year old girl says "No, this is wrong, I won't participate" and the next morning her entire family might be on a train...never to return.
In my humble opinion, even if she knew exactly what was happening, even if she joked & laughed & flirted with officers, she was not & is not responsible.
jmho ymmv lrr
Agreed. It was war. Whether or not she agreed, whether or not she knew, she had no choice. And everyone in war believes that their side is the right side and everyone else is evil.
By that point Germany were losing, the Allies were bombing their rail system and consequently many people were starving.
This job may well have saved her life.
Are Germany just going to persecute everyone who was an adult before 1945?
I think it depends on the circumstances of the case.Question is, do all these “nursing home processes” involving nonagenarians and centenarians “fit to stand trials” help, or hurt? I think, hurt...
Thank you, very interesting. Yes, probably this is how it happened. She was so young, how many 18-year-olds would be able to make a rational, measured decision in advancing chaos?
I think honest memoirs about her life and experiences would be so much more interesting than this show trial. All the more so that she is probably one of the very few still remembering the war.
I think it depends on the circumstances of the case.
Direct perpetrators should still be tried regardless of age. This is especially so if they were "double volunteers" in that they first volunteered to join the Nazi party or local pro Nazi group, then volunteered to join the SS or a local collaborating militia.
Senior enablers should still be tried. For example, a businessman who bid for contracts to construct forced labor camps. Or a businessman who specifically requested slave laborers from concentration camps be provided for his factory.
But.... trying then 18 year old secretaries with no history of promoting Nazi ideology as an individual and apparently no evidence of volunteering for the position is totally moronic.
That also goes for the German's last "big catch". A then 17 year old Belarusan conscript who was given three weeks training in late 1944 and assigned to a rear security unit guarding bridges and supply dumps.
No history of participating in pro Nazi groups in Belarus. His unit was then ordered to briefly guard holocaust victims on a death march. They were then returned to more "guard the bridge" duty. No survivor had previously identified him as being individually cruel.
Meh; we've all but recognized that it's quite acceptable and normal to try 18 year-olds as if they were adults and responsible for their decision-making ... and also quite often, those younger than 18 too. It happens hundreds of times a day right in the good old USofA.
We've got a tonne of experience with 18 year old men (and women) volunteering to serve in times of war and that "advancing chaos" to fight for the side that wasn't exterminating millions. Heck, even some of her fellow-citizens of the same age chose to help Jewish people hide, escape and worked the underground. Apparently they were able to make the choice to do the right thing. Only the ones doing or aiding the exterminating weren't capable of making better choices during that chaos and of same age? Bunk.
Goose and Gander. Choices. Same age.
A 'show trial'? Not in the opinion of the millions of innocent victims of that chaos or those who chose to serve to fight to end what was, quite literally, self-induced chaos.
Really, a country gets to create chaos and exterminate millions and the perpetrators then get a walk because it was "chaos"? Nyet.