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Interview with an Auschwitz Guard: 'I Do Not Feel Like a Criminal'

55 points by spindritf 12y ago

trhway 12y ago
people can evaluate their behavior either by relative yardsticks - law and morals of the group/society they belong too - or by absolute yardsticks of good and evil, like don't kill, etc... Using the relative ones is easier and gets you comfortably to the advanced age. Thus evolutionary the relative ones prevail inside given group/society. There is though some kind of correctional feedback at work that when the relative yardsticks of a given group/society drift too far from the absolute ones, the whole group/society is eliminated (or some kind of catastrophically adjusted) from the race.
- lostlogin 12y ago
  I tried to reply to you but replied to lafar6502 by accident (and my reply fits just as well there, strangely). Agreed.
- idlewords 12y ago
  This is the silliest kind of evolutionary psychology. People had kids in their teens and twenties. Who exactly was being purged for a belief in absolute good and evil before they could reproduce? Sometimes morality isn't about biology.
lafar6502 12y ago
Its remarkable how you can apply engineering / industrial methods to a mass killing facility so almost nobody feels guilty. Certainly the construction workers can't be blamed that they built the crematoria, railways can't be blamed for transporting people to death camp, chemists for inventing the Zyklon-B gas or guards for making sure nobody escapes. Everyone just did their job pretending that it's OK if you don't hurt anybody personally. I dont want to judge them, evil sometimes happens just because it's allowed to happen.
- lostlogin 12y ago
  It's not the same or of the same scale, but every time a massive scandal comes out I think on this. The thing I have in mind currently is the BBC and its group of molesters and rapists that were protected and covered for. It also appears UK politicians were up to the same stuff, but it has been much more successfully covered up. The average moral compass is pretty damn poor when peer pressure rears its ugly head.
- mariuolo 12y ago
  Thing is it all happened in steps: Germany invades Yugoslavia, he is drafted, he's picked for Waffen-SS, he is sent to guard a concentration camp. At that point it's too late to do anything short of sacrificing himself. I have mixed feelings about this. In hindsight he could have run away at point #1, but how was he to know how things would have ended?
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >At that point it's too late to do anything short of sacrificing himself. Millions of people have "sacrificed themselves", in the sense that they died fighting to get rid of the nazi regime, and tens or hundrends of thousands also sacrificed themselves by going into the resistance, aiding jews and other fugitives, sabotaging german camps in occupied cities, etc. There are lots of recorded examples of people who faced the firing squad singing or shouting for freedom. So he always had that option too. >I have mixed feelings about this. In hindsight he could have run away at point #1, but how was he to know how things would have ended? Hitler had broad mass appeal for over a decade. He wasn't some crazy dictator who suddenly imposed himself upon the German people. What he preached was actually a general sentiment, repeated by lots of intellectuals, politicians and pundits in one form of another, as was the "historical role" of Germany etc (come to think of it, not that unlike "Manifest Destiny" or the idea of "exceptionalism"). He had detailed his plans, including racial hatred and even extermination, and he had given several bloody examples. He not only was voted for in '33, but he continued to have great popular support even after the war started. It was not just silent forced compliance. Millions applauded those actions, even going out of their way to enable them.
lostlogin 12y ago
Interesting how his pension is being docked. It's surprising that he hasn't been sentenced yet this can happen.
calibraxis 12y ago
Interesting point. If you have a gun to your head, and disobedience has virtually no effect except suicide, then you have virtually no responsibility. Compare to those of us who are complicit (even if tacitly) in all sorts of crimes, from war to global climate destruction to mass incarceration. Much more responsible than this Auschwitz guard, since we have more freedom to act effectively. (Assuming he's truthful, and couldn't frag his Nazi commanders nor organize his peers.)
- tptacek 12y ago
  There is nothing in this comment I agree with at all. That doesn't mean I think it's bad; it's just startling to me how different someone else's worldview could be.
  - atmosx 12y ago
    Comparing our stance against the climate change, with a full-featured genocide is nonsense. There's a limit to everything. Then again... when individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making[1]. [1] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924174331.htm?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=neurological-basis-for-lack-of-empathy-in-psychopaths http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924174331.ht...
  - srean 12y ago
    I am responding here just for context, it is not directed at you. The parent comment is evidently not popular. It has already been pointed out in comments that many did actually martyr themselves rather than follow the orders or be a cog in the system. However what really annoys me is the insincerity of the "holier than thou" position adopted by many here. Yes, some of those who are commenting here would, I think, martyr themselves in such situations, but I doubt if the majority would. I seriously doubt, if even 50% of those commenting here from that patronizing position would do any different, and I am being generous. Its not about just those who have left such comments, I wonder how many among our own peers would take a moral stand in light of the consequences, particularly when I see people grumble and moan self righteously about even petty inconveniences. Again, I know some would, I know one or two people among my peers of whom I have absolutely no doubt that they would sacrifice themselves, and it fills me with a sense of respect for these people that I cannot even begin to describe. I would like to think that even if I dont sacrifice myself I would find a way to squirm out, but that is perhaps wishful thinking, unless you are put in that situation you never know yourself well enough. Many people were in the same position as Kiriakou, Snowden, Manning, many were fully aware of the wrongs that were going on, how many put up a resistance at a cost to themselves ? Do I consider John Yoo to have committed worse acts than this guy, well, absolutely, assuming his account is truthful. A nonignorable artifact is that we turned out to be on the winning side. Had the winners and the world order been different, Wolfowitz and their ilk would have been the new Eichmann's in the then popular narrative. @tptacek Just to be clear I am not making a case for a moral equivalence, far from it. The only connection is that many people were in a position where they could have mitigated wanton civilian casualties and gross miscarriage of justice, if they chose to adopt certain personal inconveniences. However very few actually did. A sizeable portion of US were dead against the Iraq war, but among them many still continued to fund some of it with taxes, why ? because among other things, not paying taxes would cause considerable inconvenience. And again this not by any means directed at you. I am not an US citizen but had I been one, I would have paid the taxes anyway and rationalized it away that taxes does good and very little of that is funding the war.
rdtsc 12y ago
This reminds me of (the somewhat controversial) Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt. She was the one who coined the phrase the "banality of evil". The coldness and lack of emotion present is not unlike how Arendt was describing Eichmann. It seems she was criticized for not showing enough sympathy and or seemingly dismissing the evilness of Eichmann. But in a way the opposite even more scary. That he was not mentally ill, and rabidly antisemitic, but rather stupid and ordinary. Not unlike many authoritarian followers plugged into a large bureaucratic system. He would have ascended just as successfully up the ladder in Stalin's bureaucratic machine or Pol Pot's.
- kryptiskt 12y ago
  Arendt's portrayal of Eichmann missed the mark: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/books/book-portrays-eichmann-as-evil-but-not-banal.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/books/book-portrays-eichma...
  - atlantic 12y ago
    It's a bit glib to dismiss a long and well-researched book in a single throwaway sentence. Hsve you taken the trouble to read it? I found it extremely convincing. Arendt sat through the entire trial and examined reams of historical documents.
    - kryptiskt 12y ago
      Well, I did link to a review of another long and well-researched book that picks apart Arendt's portrayal. Unless the referred documents are complete fabrications I can't see how Arendt's thesis holds water anymore.
      - GftaLW 12y ago
        I encourage others to read that review of Bettina Stangneth's "Eichmann Before Jerusalem". Again: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/books/book-portrays-eichmann-as-evil-but-not-banal.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/books/book-portrays-eichma.... It does contradict Arendt's thesis, and does so with comprehensive grounding in source material that had been unexamined. Arendt's thesis is that Eichmann was banal -- that is so lacking in originality and boring -- in his evil, that he was an unthinking functionary just following orders. This is not what Eichmann's memoirs and interviews from his time in Argentina (after World War II, before Jerusalem) convey. He contemplated and dismissed the philosophy of Kant. He participated in weekly book clubs and laid groundwork for Holocaust deniers. He spoke of his genocidal role as a "duty to our blood". This is not the talk of a man who was just following orders.
idlewords 12y ago
"I never did harm to any Jew," says a former guard at Auschwitz. The guy sleeps well at night. He invited his wife and neighbor, who have all heard it before, to listen to the interview. He stood in front of a permanent bonfire of people, with a gun, and imagines himself as a victim. The power of rationalization is terrifying. And the smarter you are, the better you are at it.
- jschwartzi 12y ago
  What would you have him do instead?
- haberman 12y ago
  Would you have had the courage to desert under threat of getting shot? I'm not sure I would. I feel quite certain that I couldn't possibly be brainwashed to do a thing like that willingly. But under threat of pain and death I'm not sure I would be capable of standing up to that kind of force. I honestly don't know what I would do. On the other hand, my conscience would most certainly not be clear in the aftermath.
jqm 12y ago
Of course not. Being "criminal" is relative to the society one inhabits. That being said, he ought to feel badly about what was being done and his part in it. Conscience is higher than, and apart from, being criminal. I feel badly about some of the things my society is doing right now. I regret my part in it, but short of drastic (and probably technically "criminal") measures, there is little I feel I can do. Just small things, and these don't seem to matter much. So I'm just doing the less bad that I reasonably can. But I still feel bad about some of the things we do.
- PythonicAlpha 12y ago
  The sad thing is, when societies, that helped to defend against the dark sides of humanity, erode so much. ;(
Qantourisc 12y ago
I always wonder: shoot the man giving orders ?
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  It sounds so simple, and yet it has happened so rarely.
  - arjie 12y ago
    Curiously, at least a few cases of killing your own officer are recorded when it's in your own immediate interest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging I suppose the soldiers asked to do bad things (like this man) rationalize it away.
    - Houshalter 12y ago
      Well fragging was common on the front lines because it had plausible deniability of the enemy throwing a grenade back. In a prison camp far away from the front, it's more difficult to explain, and harder to get away with.
lunz 12y ago
Try Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah". It's a very unusual documentary without any material from historical film archives. He talked to jewish survivors, to their neighbours and also to Nazis, that were discovered by him. He filmed many locations as they were in the 70's (when the documentary was finished) and much much more. The documentary is about 10 hours long, and it took him several years to create. Lanzmann participated in the french résistance.
PythonicAlpha 12y ago
The big mystery is, that even total "normal" people can become "beasts". The problem is, that we are so far away from all that, that we think, we are immune to such things ... but we are not. Because humans are essentially the same today as yesterday. The only thing we could/should do is, remember what happened in the past. But we do the opposite: We make unnatural beasts of those people, that existed in the past -- some fairy-tale like creatures, that existed only in a nightmare of humanity. But it was no nightmare and it can come back to us very quickly. Look into the nearer past -- what happened even in the "peaceful" Europe (e.g. Yugoslavia) -- humans can easily be beasts again and much easier, when we think, that it all was a fairy-tale.
- Zigurd 12y ago
  It's not a mystery, it is a science: Flags, uniforms, medals, oaths, "unit cohesion," etc. are all designed to make a killer out of you or me if there is a need for it. There are psychologists living and working in the US who designed torture programs.
  - PythonicAlpha 12y ago
    Totally correct. By mystery, I wanted to say something different: Most people will not believe, how little is needed to make a beast out of "normal people". Apropos science: the EU decided, that in the future, costs of the military will now be accounted for in the same category as investments into science, universities or infrastructure. Thus, countries of the EU can put more money into weapons without missing the EU targets for investments into the future. Sometimes politics can just be a totally dirty business.
atmosx 12y ago
I happen to live in a country where Nazism is on the rise and everyone might have to eventually pick sides. I hope not, but Greece right now looks very much Germany in 1930 and if things do not change drastically in the next 5 years, I'm not sure how we're gonna void a Nazi regime. The fact that this guy doesn't feel guilty, makes me sad. To me he is a racist, killer. There are situations in life, where you have to pick-sides. You can't play Switzerland when the whole world around you goes in ruins. At least to me, is not acceptable and says a lot about your character.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  It's easy to say that behind a computer screen. It's much harder to choose to die for your beliefs, especially if doing so doesn't even help your cause. Realistically a single guard would not have been able to do much. To say it say it "says a lot about your character" is ridiculous. The vast majority of people didn't resist.
  - atmosx 12y ago
    To me this case is extreme, so my judgment and measures are extreme. Of course it's easier said than done, but that doesn't change anything. The vast majority of which population? Are you referring to Europeans or Germans alone?
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55 points by spindritf 12y ago

people can evaluate their behavior either by relative yardsticks - law and morals of the group/society they belong too - or by absolute yardsticks of good and evil, like don't kill, etc... Using the relative ones is easier and gets you comfortably to the advanced age. Thus evolutionary the relative ones prevail inside given group/society. There is though some kind of correctional feedback at work that when the relative yardsticks of a given group/society drift too far from the absolute ones, the whole group/society is eliminated (or some kind of catastrophically adjusted) from the race.

lostlogin 12y ago
I tried to reply to you but replied to lafar6502 by accident (and my reply fits just as well there, strangely). Agreed.
idlewords 12y ago
This is the silliest kind of evolutionary psychology. People had kids in their teens and twenties. Who exactly was being purged for a belief in absolute good and evil before they could reproduce? Sometimes morality isn't about biology.

lafar6502 12y ago

Its remarkable how you can apply engineering / industrial methods to a mass killing facility so almost nobody feels guilty. Certainly the construction workers can't be blamed that they built the crematoria, railways can't be blamed for transporting people to death camp, chemists for inventing the Zyklon-B gas or guards for making sure nobody escapes. Everyone just did their job pretending that it's OK if you don't hurt anybody personally. I dont want to judge them, evil sometimes happens just because it's allowed to happen.

lostlogin 12y ago
It's not the same or of the same scale, but every time a massive scandal comes out I think on this. The thing I have in mind currently is the BBC and its group of molesters and rapists that were protected and covered for. It also appears UK politicians were up to the same stuff, but it has been much more successfully covered up. The average moral compass is pretty damn poor when peer pressure rears its ugly head.
mariuolo 12y ago
Thing is it all happened in steps: Germany invades Yugoslavia, he is drafted, he's picked for Waffen-SS, he is sent to guard a concentration camp. At that point it's too late to do anything short of sacrificing himself. I have mixed feelings about this. In hindsight he could have run away at point #1, but how was he to know how things would have ended?
- coldtea 12y ago
  >At that point it's too late to do anything short of sacrificing himself. Millions of people have "sacrificed themselves", in the sense that they died fighting to get rid of the nazi regime, and tens or hundrends of thousands also sacrificed themselves by going into the resistance, aiding jews and other fugitives, sabotaging german camps in occupied cities, etc. There are lots of recorded examples of people who faced the firing squad singing or shouting for freedom. So he always had that option too. >I have mixed feelings about this. In hindsight he could have run away at point #1, but how was he to know how things would have ended? Hitler had broad mass appeal for over a decade. He wasn't some crazy dictator who suddenly imposed himself upon the German people. What he preached was actually a general sentiment, repeated by lots of intellectuals, politicians and pundits in one form of another, as was the "historical role" of Germany etc (come to think of it, not that unlike "Manifest Destiny" or the idea of "exceptionalism"). He had detailed his plans, including racial hatred and even extermination, and he had given several bloody examples. He not only was voted for in '33, but he continued to have great popular support even after the war started. It was not just silent forced compliance. Millions applauded those actions, even going out of their way to enable them.

lostlogin 12y ago

Interesting how his pension is being docked. It's surprising that he hasn't been sentenced yet this can happen.

calibraxis 12y ago

Interesting point. If you have a gun to your head, and disobedience has virtually no effect except suicide, then you have virtually no responsibility. Compare to those of us who are complicit (even if tacitly) in all sorts of crimes, from war to global climate destruction to mass incarceration. Much more responsible than this Auschwitz guard, since we have more freedom to act effectively. (Assuming he's truthful, and couldn't frag his Nazi commanders nor organize his peers.)

tptacek 12y ago
There is nothing in this comment I agree with at all. That doesn't mean I think it's bad; it's just startling to me how different someone else's worldview could be.
- atmosx 12y ago
  Comparing our stance against the climate change, with a full-featured genocide is nonsense. There's a limit to everything. Then again... when individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making[1]. [1] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924174331.htm?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=neurological-basis-for-lack-of-empathy-in-psychopaths http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924174331.ht...
- srean 12y ago
  I am responding here just for context, it is not directed at you. The parent comment is evidently not popular. It has already been pointed out in comments that many did actually martyr themselves rather than follow the orders or be a cog in the system. However what really annoys me is the insincerity of the "holier than thou" position adopted by many here. Yes, some of those who are commenting here would, I think, martyr themselves in such situations, but I doubt if the majority would. I seriously doubt, if even 50% of those commenting here from that patronizing position would do any different, and I am being generous. Its not about just those who have left such comments, I wonder how many among our own peers would take a moral stand in light of the consequences, particularly when I see people grumble and moan self righteously about even petty inconveniences. Again, I know some would, I know one or two people among my peers of whom I have absolutely no doubt that they would sacrifice themselves, and it fills me with a sense of respect for these people that I cannot even begin to describe. I would like to think that even if I dont sacrifice myself I would find a way to squirm out, but that is perhaps wishful thinking, unless you are put in that situation you never know yourself well enough. Many people were in the same position as Kiriakou, Snowden, Manning, many were fully aware of the wrongs that were going on, how many put up a resistance at a cost to themselves ? Do I consider John Yoo to have committed worse acts than this guy, well, absolutely, assuming his account is truthful. A nonignorable artifact is that we turned out to be on the winning side. Had the winners and the world order been different, Wolfowitz and their ilk would have been the new Eichmann's in the then popular narrative. @tptacek Just to be clear I am not making a case for a moral equivalence, far from it. The only connection is that many people were in a position where they could have mitigated wanton civilian casualties and gross miscarriage of justice, if they chose to adopt certain personal inconveniences. However very few actually did. A sizeable portion of US were dead against the Iraq war, but among them many still continued to fund some of it with taxes, why ? because among other things, not paying taxes would cause considerable inconvenience. And again this not by any means directed at you. I am not an US citizen but had I been one, I would have paid the taxes anyway and rationalized it away that taxes does good and very little of that is funding the war.

rdtsc 12y ago

This reminds me of (the somewhat controversial) Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt. She was the one who coined the phrase the "banality of evil". The coldness and lack of emotion present is not unlike how Arendt was describing Eichmann. It seems she was criticized for not showing enough sympathy and or seemingly dismissing the evilness of Eichmann. But in a way the opposite even more scary. That he was not mentally ill, and rabidly antisemitic, but rather stupid and ordinary. Not unlike many authoritarian followers plugged into a large bureaucratic system. He would have ascended just as successfully up the ladder in Stalin's bureaucratic machine or Pol Pot's.

kryptiskt 12y ago
Arendt's portrayal of Eichmann missed the mark: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/books/book-portrays-eichmann-as-evil-but-not-banal.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/books/book-portrays-eichma...
- atlantic 12y ago
  It's a bit glib to dismiss a long and well-researched book in a single throwaway sentence. Hsve you taken the trouble to read it? I found it extremely convincing. Arendt sat through the entire trial and examined reams of historical documents.
  - kryptiskt 12y ago
    Well, I did link to a review of another long and well-researched book that picks apart Arendt's portrayal. Unless the referred documents are complete fabrications I can't see how Arendt's thesis holds water anymore.
    - GftaLW 12y ago
      I encourage others to read that review of Bettina Stangneth's "Eichmann Before Jerusalem". Again: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/books/book-portrays-eichmann-as-evil-but-not-banal.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/books/book-portrays-eichma.... It does contradict Arendt's thesis, and does so with comprehensive grounding in source material that had been unexamined. Arendt's thesis is that Eichmann was banal -- that is so lacking in originality and boring -- in his evil, that he was an unthinking functionary just following orders. This is not what Eichmann's memoirs and interviews from his time in Argentina (after World War II, before Jerusalem) convey. He contemplated and dismissed the philosophy of Kant. He participated in weekly book clubs and laid groundwork for Holocaust deniers. He spoke of his genocidal role as a "duty to our blood". This is not the talk of a man who was just following orders.

idlewords 12y ago

"I never did harm to any Jew," says a former guard at Auschwitz. The guy sleeps well at night. He invited his wife and neighbor, who have all heard it before, to listen to the interview. He stood in front of a permanent bonfire of people, with a gun, and imagines himself as a victim. The power of rationalization is terrifying. And the smarter you are, the better you are at it.

jschwartzi 12y ago
What would you have him do instead?
haberman 12y ago
Would you have had the courage to desert under threat of getting shot? I'm not sure I would. I feel quite certain that I couldn't possibly be brainwashed to do a thing like that willingly. But under threat of pain and death I'm not sure I would be capable of standing up to that kind of force. I honestly don't know what I would do. On the other hand, my conscience would most certainly not be clear in the aftermath.

jqm 12y ago

Of course not. Being "criminal" is relative to the society one inhabits. That being said, he ought to feel badly about what was being done and his part in it. Conscience is higher than, and apart from, being criminal. I feel badly about some of the things my society is doing right now. I regret my part in it, but short of drastic (and probably technically "criminal") measures, there is little I feel I can do. Just small things, and these don't seem to matter much. So I'm just doing the less bad that I reasonably can. But I still feel bad about some of the things we do.

PythonicAlpha 12y ago
The sad thing is, when societies, that helped to defend against the dark sides of humanity, erode so much. ;(

Qantourisc 12y ago

I always wonder: shoot the man giving orders ?

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
It sounds so simple, and yet it has happened so rarely.
- arjie 12y ago
  Curiously, at least a few cases of killing your own officer are recorded when it's in your own immediate interest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging I suppose the soldiers asked to do bad things (like this man) rationalize it away.
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    Well fragging was common on the front lines because it had plausible deniability of the enemy throwing a grenade back. In a prison camp far away from the front, it's more difficult to explain, and harder to get away with.

lunz 12y ago

Try Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah". It's a very unusual documentary without any material from historical film archives. He talked to jewish survivors, to their neighbours and also to Nazis, that were discovered by him. He filmed many locations as they were in the 70's (when the documentary was finished) and much much more. The documentary is about 10 hours long, and it took him several years to create. Lanzmann participated in the french résistance.

PythonicAlpha 12y ago

The big mystery is, that even total "normal" people can become "beasts". The problem is, that we are so far away from all that, that we think, we are immune to such things ... but we are not. Because humans are essentially the same today as yesterday. The only thing we could/should do is, remember what happened in the past. But we do the opposite: We make unnatural beasts of those people, that existed in the past -- some fairy-tale like creatures, that existed only in a nightmare of humanity. But it was no nightmare and it can come back to us very quickly. Look into the nearer past -- what happened even in the "peaceful" Europe (e.g. Yugoslavia) -- humans can easily be beasts again and much easier, when we think, that it all was a fairy-tale.

Zigurd 12y ago
It's not a mystery, it is a science: Flags, uniforms, medals, oaths, "unit cohesion," etc. are all designed to make a killer out of you or me if there is a need for it. There are psychologists living and working in the US who designed torture programs.
- PythonicAlpha 12y ago
  Totally correct. By mystery, I wanted to say something different: Most people will not believe, how little is needed to make a beast out of "normal people". Apropos science: the EU decided, that in the future, costs of the military will now be accounted for in the same category as investments into science, universities or infrastructure. Thus, countries of the EU can put more money into weapons without missing the EU targets for investments into the future. Sometimes politics can just be a totally dirty business.

atmosx 12y ago

I happen to live in a country where Nazism is on the rise and everyone might have to eventually pick sides. I hope not, but Greece right now looks very much Germany in 1930 and if things do not change drastically in the next 5 years, I'm not sure how we're gonna void a Nazi regime. The fact that this guy doesn't feel guilty, makes me sad. To me he is a racist, killer. There are situations in life, where you have to pick-sides. You can't play Switzerland when the whole world around you goes in ruins. At least to me, is not acceptable and says a lot about your character.

Houshalter 12y ago
It's easy to say that behind a computer screen. It's much harder to choose to die for your beliefs, especially if doing so doesn't even help your cause. Realistically a single guard would not have been able to do much. To say it say it "says a lot about your character" is ridiculous. The vast majority of people didn't resist.
- atmosx 12y ago
  To me this case is extreme, so my judgment and measures are extreme. Of course it's easier said than done, but that doesn't change anything. The vast majority of which population? Are you referring to Europeans or Germans alone?

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