Germany - Prosecutors recommend Auschwitz guard charges

[Cappuccino]

Untrue, unfortunately. I know this literature pretty well, and cannot think of a single case of a prosecution or court-martial for a German camp guard who refused to carry out an order of torture, execution, etc. Refusal might impact privileges, get you transferred or lose you a promotion, but it would most certainly NOT land you in the gas chambers too.

No statute of limitation on murder -- why should there be one on mass murder? Whether a case can be made is, of course, another question.

s

Hmmmm. I can think of a few senior German officers who suffered a bad end. Rommel, for example. Maybe the similar fates of those in the most junior ranks weren't recorded for history by the totalitarian regime responsible for their fates. Or maybe Nazi Germany practiced totalitarianism with such kid gloves that no child who grew up under it was ever forced to join an organisation which indoctrinated its members into Nazi ideals.

 

[Ausgirl]

I would hope it would be a case-to-case prosecution, with witnesses and other proof as to a particular guard's criminal actions against those in the camps.

The camps were a magnet for sociopaths, sexual sadists, the scum of the earth - look at Josef Mengele.. I have often wondered what kind of nurses willingly stood by his side, listening to the screams as he stitched twins together and removed organs without anesthetic, and all the other unspeakably sick 'experiments' he performed?

Just fyi, there were 3700 female guards who worked in the camps. Bit of info, on Wiki:
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_guards_in_Nazi_concentration_camps"]Female guards in Nazi concentration camps - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

Among the people staffing the camps, I am sure there were some who opposed the brutality and did what little they could to help minimise it. But I am also sure the survivors are very aware of who was responsible for their agonies and who was not.

 

[ArianeEmory]

And a quick aside for those who don't want to delve into Wikipedia on the topic (and I don't entirely blame you); not all the Nazi concentration camps were also extermination camps. (At some, they simply worked/starved the prisoners to death.) However, the reason everyone knows Auschwitz is that it was the primary extermination camp and killed the greatest of number of people, most likely over a million. They were exterminating thousands of people a day at the peak of killing, with multiple gas chambers and crematoria. It's hard to imagine a guard at that particular camp having any plausible deniability.

 

[writer7]

eta: cross posted

They could probably be transferred to a different branch of the military, though, right? Germany needed a lot of soldiers at the time. I was always under the impression that working at the concentration camps was some sort of (sick) 'perk'.

But, imho, that's what trials are for. If the defendant can argue that he had no power to say no under the regime and why, that sounds like it could be a very good argument. The court should weigh the facts, including the age of the men at the time, how much of a right to say no they had, etc. But they should be tried, yes, I think.

 

[Ausgirl]

It should be noted that they are not wanting to prosecute -all- guards. Some have been considered, and it's decided they should not face prosecution.

I do apologise for putting Wiki links here, but it's the fastest, most general links I can find on the hop. Here's a site dedicated to female guards - this link is to the page on infamous ones:

http://blog.uvm.edu/mziegle1/infamous-camp-guards/

Here's an account of daily life in one of those "work to death" camps, which I found fits pretty closely with the stories I have listened to first hand, from survivors:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_daily_routine_in_Nazi_concentration_camps

The issue of the kapos is a difficult one - on one hand, they were prisoners themselves and at risk of imminent death if they didn't do thier job. Also, in a place of such suffering, what choice is it to give a man: betray your fellow prisoners, keep them in line, beat them -- or we'll kill you and probably your family as well.. not much of a choice, is it.

On the other hand, it seems some were as cruel as the Nazis. Should they be prosecuted too?

 

[Montjoy]

I've often wondered about some of the defenses for aged Nazis. Like -- "Oh, he's 89 -- he's too old to prosecute." I wonder if anyone here would feel that way about him (or her) if the victim was an 8 year old in (say) Nebraska. And the other defense -- "Well, s/he has gone so long without prosecution...perhaps there is no point in prosecuting now." I wonder if anyone here would feel this way if her neighbor was the victim...and myself I don't see how there should be a reward for evading prosecution.

 

[Reader]

Kinda makes me wonder how all of US/you and me, will be judged in the years to come, even though we hate invasion and war. WE have no power.

Well, it does seem to have some similarities. 'Course I'm probably wrong and we won't be blamed for the chaos in the middle east the way the German people were, nor will our sons be blamed, but still, I'm a bit uncomfortable.

Forgive me for feeling a wee hair different, it's only my opinion.

Our government in the U.S. is in no way similar to Nazi Germany under Hitler, who was the government, and our soldiers did not participate in mass extermination and torture of civilians due to their religion, race, disabilities, etc.

I remembered a good link that gives the full story of this genocide (along with others that I had posted on another forum):

http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/holocaust.htm

It began with a simple boycott of Jewish shops and ended in the gas chambers at Auschwitz as Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers attempted to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. ......

Adolf Hitler to his Army commanders, August 22, 1939:
"Thus for the time being I have sent to the East only my 'Death's Head Units' with the orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need. Who still talks nowadays about the Armenians?"

http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/index.html

 

[Trident]

Well, I did answer, but obviously the answers weren't correct?

 

[LambChop]

Let's try to stay on topic here, shall we. The politics of other countries, including the US has nothing to do with this discussion about German guards for concentration camps during WWII. Thanks

 

[Trident]

Let's try to stay on topic here, shall we. The politics of other countries, including the US has nothing to do with this discussion about German guards for concentration camps during WWII. Thanks

Of course, you're right. It's just that I've spent the largest part of my life tying things together.

Love your handle, BTW.

 

[ArianeEmory]

I've often wondered about some of the defenses for aged Nazis. Like -- "Oh, he's 89 -- he's too old to prosecute." I wonder if anyone here would feel that way about him (or her) if the victim was an 8 year old in (say) Nebraska. And the other defense -- "Well, s/he has gone so long without prosecution...perhaps there is no point in prosecuting now." I wonder if anyone here would feel this way if her neighbor was the victim...and myself I don't see how there should be a reward for evading prosecution.

For even more perspective, an 89-year-old arriving by train to Auschwitz would have been immediately directed to the line that led to the gas chamber.

 

[Perodicticus potto]

The issue of the kapos is a difficult one - on one hand, they were prisoners themselves and at risk of imminent death if they didn't do thier job. Also, in a place of such suffering, what choice is it to give a man: betray your fellow prisoners, keep them in line, beat them -- or we'll kill you and probably your family as well.. not much of a choice, is it.

The Holocaust survivor Primo Levi had this to say about the kapos (and Nazi excuse-making) in his book The Drowned and the Saved:

I believe that no one is authorised to judge them, not those who lived through the experience of the Lager and even less those who did not live through it. I would invite anyone who dares pass judgement to carry out upon himself, with sincerity, a conceptual experiment: Let him imagine, if he can, that he has lived for months or years in a ghetto, tormented by chronic hunger, fatigue, promiscuity, and humiliation; that he has seen die around him, one by one, his beloved; that he is cut off from the world, unable to receive or transmit news; that, finally, he is loaded onto a train, eighty or a hundred persons to a boxcar; that he travels into the unknown, blindly, for sleepless days and nights; and that he is at last flung inside the walls of an indecipherable inferno. This, it seems to me, is the true Befehlnotstand, the "state of compulsion following an order": not the one systematically and impudently invoked by the Nazis dragged to judgement, and later on (but in their footsteps), by the war criminals of many other countries. The former is a rigid either/or, immediate obedience or death; the latter is an internal fact at the centre of power and could have been resolved (actually often was resolved) by some manoeuvre, some slowdown in career, moderate punishment, or, in the worst of cases, the objector's transfer to the front.

 

[Perodicticus potto]

Hmmmm. I can think of a few senior German officers who suffered a bad end. Rommel, for example.

Rommel was forced to commit suicide after becoming involved in a plot to overthrow Hitler. (He wanted Hitler arrested; his co-conspirators rejected this in favour of an assassination attempt, which sadly failed.) His earlier refusal to deport or execute Jews was not what got him in trouble; indeed, it didn't stop him from becoming a national hero.

Maybe the similar fates of those in the most junior ranks weren't recorded for history by the totalitarian regime responsible for their fates.

Well, maybe that happened. But as F.C. Baur said: "Anything is possible, but what is probable?" There is little if any documentary evidence to support the idea that soldiers were harshly punished for refusing to kill Jews, while there is ample evidence demonstrating that this was not the Third Reich's policy.