7 ms·

100-year-old former Nazi guard has gone on trial, facing charges for 3518 deaths

29 points by _Microft 5y ago

Hackbraten 5y ago
Too little, too late. But better than nothing.
- kleiba 5y ago
  In a way, I agree. But then again, I'm kind of amazed that Germany is still actually prosecuting anyone for Nazi-time crimes. There's lots of countries where terrible crimes against humanity have been committed, and even if they don't reach the magnitude of the holocaust, you don't usually see a lot of enthusiasm going after the perpetrators a few years down the line.
  - RandomLensman 5y ago
    "Still" is almost the wrong word. After the war and well into the 1950s and 1960s Germany didn't really "want" to prosecute and sometimes when there were prosecutions there was also a strong impetus to avoid strong penalties (don't recall the exact nature of the uniform pockets? Well then you are clearly not reliable as a witness). Doesn't mean there were not some prosecutions and people taking that stuff serious - but not really something "popular".
thou4234234 5y ago
... and yet the clock ticks and no one is prosecuted for the US's war crimes. Vietnam, Pinochet, Iraq.... how many more do we need ? leader of the 'free world' apparently.
- koonsolo 5y ago
  Only the losing parties get prosecuted.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    And only once the "middle management" died of old age a decade ago.
  - dtech 5y ago
    I wouldn't exactly call US the winner of the Vietnam or Iraq wars
    - DennisAleynikov 5y ago
      would you consider Vietnam to be in a position to write and have their own side of it become history?
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    That's sort of an unhelpful truism. By definition, the losing parties don't have control of a judicial system within which a trial of the winning parties could take place. If what you mean is "winning parties don't prosecute their own side", then I would also disagree with that, since some countries do believe that the rules they are ostensibly fighting for do apply to themselves: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/mar/29/afghanistan-british-army-crimes https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/mar/29/afghan...
- inside65 5y ago
  The US recently killed a family in Afghanistan with a drone. All they said was oops, sorry and went on about their business. Likewise, isreal killed many Palestinians and yet they face no repercussions.
  - slashdev 5y ago
    War is a messy business. There is no way to wage war without killing innocent people. The difference between the Nazi's an the Americans or the Israelis is the former did it on purpose while the latter take every reasonable precaution to avoid killing the wrong people. The other side, the Palestinians or the Taliban actively target innocent people. Yet I don't hear you complaining about that - maybe you're not impartial here.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      “The Palestinians” are not even a unified polity: """officially governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and claiming the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jerusalem as the designated capital; in practice, however, only partial administrative control is held over the 167 "islands" in the West Bank, and Gaza is ruled by a rival government (Hamas). The entirety of territory claimed by the State of Palestine has been occupied since 1948, first by Egypt (Gaza Strip) and Jordan (West Bank) and then by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967.""" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine I don’t know how much I don’t know about the conflict; about who (if anyone) is using Palestine as a proxy to attack Israel without the risk of direct retaliation; about the proportionality or otherwise of IDF responses; about the legality or otherwise under international law of any given village or town in Palestinian territory created and occupied by what are called “Israeli settlers” in some newspapers, nor even do I know if those settlers are or are not officially endorsed by the government of Israel. Everything I learn about this, at every level of detail, has been a surprise to me, literally everything, starting with “antisemitism wasn’t eliminated with the death of Hitler”. Yet: treating “the Palestinians” as a unified bloc like “the Taliban” or “the USA” seems unhelpful in this case.
      - 5y ago
- lmilcin 5y ago
  There is a fundamental difference between being incompetent at waging war and organized, systematic action to erase an entire group of people simply because of their genes. If you really want to compare Nazi to US you would have to imagine US using their industry and war machine to try and kill every single Afghani or Muslim in the world. See how ridiculous this sounds? That is because these two acts are not really comparable in any meaningful way. My grandparents lived through the war in Poland and I spent my childhood listening to their stories.
  - swayvil 5y ago
    The racism was just marketing. The purpose of that marketing was to create an enemy. The first ingredient in any war. The purpose of the war was to acquire wealth for its investors. Just like any war.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    The acts of the US do not need to be as bad as the Nazis to still be ruled as murder. Killing thousands of civilians is still terrible even though killing millions is worse.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- pandatigox 5y ago
  "History is written by the victors". When crimes are committed against humanity, it's the elite that get to decide which one of the crimes are deemed worth punishing
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Proofs: Carpet bombing of cities and civil infrastructure, unlimited u-boat / submarine warfare.
- emouryto 5y ago
  Ha, US military has immunity in every country they go to. If they kill somebody in a car accident (which happened more than once, even in Europe) they will not go to trail but be sent home and "judged" there. What is power without hypocrisy...
  - meany 5y ago
    That’s a bit hyperbolic. How these issues are handled vary by each country and are agreed upon by the host country. Here is a link on the topic. https://www.findlaw.com/military/criminal-law/foreign-criminal-laws-and-military-personnel-stationed-abroad.html https://www.findlaw.com/military/criminal-law/foreign-crimin...
    - emouryto 5y ago
      Sure, "agreed upon". Since it's very beneficial for a country to grant immunity to a large corpus of foreigners with guns.
- NmAmDa 5y ago
  Or bombing two cities without a military purpose with nuclear bombs.
sebow 5y ago
I don't know the details, but it seems like the title is clickbait: he faces charges for being an accessory to 3518 murders, whereas at first glance the title implies that he more or less killed 3518 people. Reading about the witness definitely brings some emotion, but it has be said that while the guy in question might never find redemption/forgiveness, maturity and character comes from the fact that we look past mistakes even in the 11th hour.Can't help but to think that somewhere down the line this also may be taken advantage of politically because the theme is trendy nowadays. Also one has to ponder the question of the value his imprisonment/other punishment brings to society.The only one seems to be justice, but even then...
Sherlock 5y ago
Disagree with prosecuting drones instead of people actually giving orders.
- spyke112 5y ago
  I agree, it seems silly to me, to be prosecuting a guard after all these years, if anything I hope he will get a chance to apologize, and then live the rest of his life full of remorse.
  - Miner49er 5y ago
    This is crazy to me, this guy deserves the death penalty, not a chance to apologize.
    - spyke112 5y ago
      You see Germany has collectively moved past barbaric punishment such as death penalty, so he will most likely be sentenced to prison anyway.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        It’s not obvious to me that warehousing someone for life is massively less barbaric than the death penalty. Either way, you’re depriving them of a full life; one just takes a lot longer. Some people, through their actions, have demonstrated that they’re unable to live freely in society. Society has to choose what to do with those people. There isn’t any great answer, only shades or different types of suckage.
        RandomLensman 5y ago
        Not how "life" works in Germany - does not mean "life" as such, need to be able to re-enter society (at least in theory).
        fileeditview 5y ago
rosmax_1337 5y ago
This is ridiculous.
donw 5y ago
Perhaps my grandparents' family died under this man's eye. And I forgive him. That was almost eighty years ago. I am not a forgiving person. Were this man 40, or 50, or even 70, things would be different. But he is an old man at the end of his life. Punishing him now is not justice. It is merely vengeance upon his family. "Following orders" is what people do. Don't, and you are punished. Harshly. Especially in authoritarian states. Just this past month, an Air Force drone pilot was thrown in prison for blowing the whistle about the Biden administration slaughtering a family. Things then were no different than they are now.
- cygx 5y ago
  I am not a forgiving person. Were this man 40, or 50, or even 70, things would be different. But he is an old man at the end of his life. Any sentence will take this into account, but determination of guilt is orthogonal to that.
- howaboutnope 5y ago
  The movie "Walk on Water" comes to mind. I think you might like it.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
So what changed to start these two prosecutions now? As presumably their roles at the camps was already known. Or was there some new cache of evidence linking them to thousands of murders?
- cygx 5y ago
  A change in juristic practice in 2011 (specifically, the trial and sentencing of John Demjanjuk) and new information uncovered in the Russian State Military Archive in Moscow.
cyberpsybin 5y ago
Can we prosecute the Americans who drone bombed and killed an aid worker and children when running away from Afghanistan?
- cirrus3 5y ago
  Ideally, yes. BTW, are you replying to the correct post?
- whydoibother 5y ago
  Forget all the other deaths for the past twenty years. Everyone from Bush and on that continued that war should be rotting in prison.
JoeyBananas 5y ago
This is a modern scapegoat ritual.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  How is he a scapegoat? He is being tried for his own alleged actions. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scapegoat https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scapegoat I, for one, am pleased that the person being called a Nazi was actually a Nazi. That's unusual these days.
- senectus1 5y ago
  Theater maybe, scapegoat no.
nkmnz 5y ago
Contrary to public sentiments (and maybe to other countries legal ethos), a German court has the function to first and foremost establish the truth - punishment is secondary to this. In fact, Someone can be found guilty, but still leave the court as a free person. This man, for example, had more than 75 years to bring good to the world, to fight antisemitism, to build a better society than the one that helped him show his most evil face. Let’s hope he made good use of the time - the judges will take this into consideration.

29 points by _Microft 5y ago

Hackbraten 5y ago

Too little, too late. But better than nothing.

kleiba 5y ago
In a way, I agree. But then again, I'm kind of amazed that Germany is still actually prosecuting anyone for Nazi-time crimes. There's lots of countries where terrible crimes against humanity have been committed, and even if they don't reach the magnitude of the holocaust, you don't usually see a lot of enthusiasm going after the perpetrators a few years down the line.
- RandomLensman 5y ago
  "Still" is almost the wrong word. After the war and well into the 1950s and 1960s Germany didn't really "want" to prosecute and sometimes when there were prosecutions there was also a strong impetus to avoid strong penalties (don't recall the exact nature of the uniform pockets? Well then you are clearly not reliable as a witness). Doesn't mean there were not some prosecutions and people taking that stuff serious - but not really something "popular".

thou4234234 5y ago

... and yet the clock ticks and no one is prosecuted for the US's war crimes. Vietnam, Pinochet, Iraq.... how many more do we need ? leader of the 'free world' apparently.

koonsolo 5y ago
Only the losing parties get prosecuted.
- hef19898 5y ago
  And only once the "middle management" died of old age a decade ago.
- dtech 5y ago
  I wouldn't exactly call US the winner of the Vietnam or Iraq wars
  - DennisAleynikov 5y ago
    would you consider Vietnam to be in a position to write and have their own side of it become history?
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  That's sort of an unhelpful truism. By definition, the losing parties don't have control of a judicial system within which a trial of the winning parties could take place. If what you mean is "winning parties don't prosecute their own side", then I would also disagree with that, since some countries do believe that the rules they are ostensibly fighting for do apply to themselves: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/mar/29/afghanistan-british-army-crimes https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/mar/29/afghan...
inside65 5y ago
The US recently killed a family in Afghanistan with a drone. All they said was oops, sorry and went on about their business. Likewise, isreal killed many Palestinians and yet they face no repercussions.
- slashdev 5y ago
  War is a messy business. There is no way to wage war without killing innocent people. The difference between the Nazi's an the Americans or the Israelis is the former did it on purpose while the latter take every reasonable precaution to avoid killing the wrong people. The other side, the Palestinians or the Taliban actively target innocent people. Yet I don't hear you complaining about that - maybe you're not impartial here.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    “The Palestinians” are not even a unified polity: """officially governed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and claiming the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jerusalem as the designated capital; in practice, however, only partial administrative control is held over the 167 "islands" in the West Bank, and Gaza is ruled by a rival government (Hamas). The entirety of territory claimed by the State of Palestine has been occupied since 1948, first by Egypt (Gaza Strip) and Jordan (West Bank) and then by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967.""" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine I don’t know how much I don’t know about the conflict; about who (if anyone) is using Palestine as a proxy to attack Israel without the risk of direct retaliation; about the proportionality or otherwise of IDF responses; about the legality or otherwise under international law of any given village or town in Palestinian territory created and occupied by what are called “Israeli settlers” in some newspapers, nor even do I know if those settlers are or are not officially endorsed by the government of Israel. Everything I learn about this, at every level of detail, has been a surprise to me, literally everything, starting with “antisemitism wasn’t eliminated with the death of Hitler”. Yet: treating “the Palestinians” as a unified bloc like “the Taliban” or “the USA” seems unhelpful in this case.
    - 5y ago
lmilcin 5y ago
There is a fundamental difference between being incompetent at waging war and organized, systematic action to erase an entire group of people simply because of their genes. If you really want to compare Nazi to US you would have to imagine US using their industry and war machine to try and kill every single Afghani or Muslim in the world. See how ridiculous this sounds? That is because these two acts are not really comparable in any meaningful way. My grandparents lived through the war in Poland and I spent my childhood listening to their stories.
- swayvil 5y ago
  The racism was just marketing. The purpose of that marketing was to create an enemy. The first ingredient in any war. The purpose of the war was to acquire wealth for its investors. Just like any war.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  The acts of the US do not need to be as bad as the Nazis to still be ruled as murder. Killing thousands of civilians is still terrible even though killing millions is worse.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
pandatigox 5y ago
"History is written by the victors". When crimes are committed against humanity, it's the elite that get to decide which one of the crimes are deemed worth punishing
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hef19898 5y ago
  Proofs: Carpet bombing of cities and civil infrastructure, unlimited u-boat / submarine warfare.
emouryto 5y ago
Ha, US military has immunity in every country they go to. If they kill somebody in a car accident (which happened more than once, even in Europe) they will not go to trail but be sent home and "judged" there. What is power without hypocrisy...
- meany 5y ago
  That’s a bit hyperbolic. How these issues are handled vary by each country and are agreed upon by the host country. Here is a link on the topic. https://www.findlaw.com/military/criminal-law/foreign-criminal-laws-and-military-personnel-stationed-abroad.html https://www.findlaw.com/military/criminal-law/foreign-crimin...
  - emouryto 5y ago
    Sure, "agreed upon". Since it's very beneficial for a country to grant immunity to a large corpus of foreigners with guns.
NmAmDa 5y ago
Or bombing two cities without a military purpose with nuclear bombs.

sebow 5y ago

I don't know the details, but it seems like the title is clickbait: he faces charges for being an accessory to 3518 murders, whereas at first glance the title implies that he more or less killed 3518 people. Reading about the witness definitely brings some emotion, but it has be said that while the guy in question might never find redemption/forgiveness, maturity and character comes from the fact that we look past mistakes even in the 11th hour.Can't help but to think that somewhere down the line this also may be taken advantage of politically because the theme is trendy nowadays. Also one has to ponder the question of the value his imprisonment/other punishment brings to society.The only one seems to be justice, but even then...

Sherlock 5y ago

Disagree with prosecuting drones instead of people actually giving orders.

spyke112 5y ago
I agree, it seems silly to me, to be prosecuting a guard after all these years, if anything I hope he will get a chance to apologize, and then live the rest of his life full of remorse.
- Miner49er 5y ago
  This is crazy to me, this guy deserves the death penalty, not a chance to apologize.
  - spyke112 5y ago
    You see Germany has collectively moved past barbaric punishment such as death penalty, so he will most likely be sentenced to prison anyway.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      It’s not obvious to me that warehousing someone for life is massively less barbaric than the death penalty. Either way, you’re depriving them of a full life; one just takes a lot longer. Some people, through their actions, have demonstrated that they’re unable to live freely in society. Society has to choose what to do with those people. There isn’t any great answer, only shades or different types of suckage.
      - RandomLensman 5y ago
        Not how "life" works in Germany - does not mean "life" as such, need to be able to re-enter society (at least in theory).
      - fileeditview 5y ago

rosmax_1337 5y ago

This is ridiculous.

donw 5y ago

Perhaps my grandparents' family died under this man's eye. And I forgive him. That was almost eighty years ago. I am not a forgiving person. Were this man 40, or 50, or even 70, things would be different. But he is an old man at the end of his life. Punishing him now is not justice. It is merely vengeance upon his family. "Following orders" is what people do. Don't, and you are punished. Harshly. Especially in authoritarian states. Just this past month, an Air Force drone pilot was thrown in prison for blowing the whistle about the Biden administration slaughtering a family. Things then were no different than they are now.

cygx 5y ago
I am not a forgiving person. Were this man 40, or 50, or even 70, things would be different. But he is an old man at the end of his life. Any sentence will take this into account, but determination of guilt is orthogonal to that.
howaboutnope 5y ago
The movie "Walk on Water" comes to mind. I think you might like it.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

So what changed to start these two prosecutions now? As presumably their roles at the camps was already known. Or was there some new cache of evidence linking them to thousands of murders?

cygx 5y ago
A change in juristic practice in 2011 (specifically, the trial and sentencing of John Demjanjuk) and new information uncovered in the Russian State Military Archive in Moscow.

cyberpsybin 5y ago

Can we prosecute the Americans who drone bombed and killed an aid worker and children when running away from Afghanistan?

cirrus3 5y ago
Ideally, yes. BTW, are you replying to the correct post?
whydoibother 5y ago
Forget all the other deaths for the past twenty years. Everyone from Bush and on that continued that war should be rotting in prison.

JoeyBananas 5y ago

This is a modern scapegoat ritual.

drewcoo 5y ago
How is he a scapegoat? He is being tried for his own alleged actions. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scapegoat https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scapegoat I, for one, am pleased that the person being called a Nazi was actually a Nazi. That's unusual these days.
senectus1 5y ago
Theater maybe, scapegoat no.

nkmnz 5y ago

Contrary to public sentiments (and maybe to other countries legal ethos), a German court has the function to first and foremost establish the truth - punishment is secondary to this. In fact, Someone can be found guilty, but still leave the court as a free person. This man, for example, had more than 75 years to bring good to the world, to fight antisemitism, to build a better society than the one that helped him show his most evil face. Let’s hope he made good use of the time - the judges will take this into consideration.