After Ethics Alarms looked at the case of a German tennis player freaking out because a fan quoted the Nazi-era lyrics of the German National anthem while he was playing a match, I found out that the German justice system has metaphorically said, “Hold my beer!”
German prosecutors announced last week that they have charged a 98-year-old man with being an accessory to 3,300 murders because he served as a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp between 1943 and 1945. The indictment states that he “supported the cruel and malicious killing of thousands of prisoners as a member of the SS guard detail.”In recent years, German courts have ruled that people who helped a Nazi death camp function can be prosecuted as accessories to the extermination there without direct evidence that they participated in any particular deaths.
If a trial goes forward, the unnamed defendant will be tried as a juvenile. He was only 17 when he was required to be a concentration camp guard.
I certainly hope putting a 98-year-old man through the ordeal of a trial and, if he lives long enough, imprisonment for not opposing the Hitler regime as a teenager when the adults around him were going mad makes Germans feel better.
The fact that this cruel prosecution is being brought underlines the deep cultural problems that led Germany to Hitler, and shows that they still are distorting the nation’s understanding of right and wrong.
Ethics Alarms 
Although I’m sure that those who had relatives mistreated and killed at this camp would like to see EVERYONE involved brought to justice, trying to bring a prosecution 81 years after the fact is or should be an exercise in futility. I’m certain that all the officers who actually ran the place or held some kind of command authority are long gone. I’m sure most of the victims are long gone. Just who remains to give first hand testimony as to what this young guard did, while a 17-year-old kid and under orders? Is this going to be a trial based on records and much later investigation by individuals a generation or two younger? How is this going to be anything like due process? Even Adolf Eichmann got due process, apart from the do-it-yourself extradition. I can’t see how you give this man due process now.
However, since we’re now posthumously punishing Confederates and anyone else who doesn’t fit the current zeitgeist, I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Steve-O- makes a good point.
Nothing surprises me when it comes to maneuverings intended to offload latent guilt derived from historical wrongs in close proximity.
~Have a nice day~
What is not wholly understood by the anti-Nazi zealots (if such a term is allowed to exist) is that, by the time Germany began losing the war, conscription dropped lower and lower in age. Teenagers had already been fighting fires, delivering mail and taking train tickets in order to free up men for the armed forces. Eventually, those same teenagers were drafted into the Army and some of them were put into Waffen-SS groups. Some, in fact, were tricked into the Waffen-SS.
An ethnic German Belgian, Mathias Schenk, wrote about how he and a buddy were tricked into the group with an advertisement asking for young men to drive trucks. They weren’t allowed to drive any other way, so the ad appealed to them. They responded and found themselves forced into the infamous Dirlewanger Brigade. Other teenagers were given flyers offering free X-Rays and other medical exams with fine print at the bottom revealing that anyone who took advantage of the offer was consenting to conscription into the SS at a future date. Some kids just joined the Army out of fear that the SS would find some way to grab them if they didn’t.
Now, do I know if this particular old fellow was tricked into the job or not? Of course not. I can tell you this: This guy would have been 8 years old when Hitler came to power. He did not vote for Hitler. He would have spent years in the Hitler Youth, his education and everything around him focused on the Fuehrerprinzip (Fuhrer Principle) of obeying orders and working toward Hitler’s goals.
It would not have occurred to this kid to request a transfer out of concentration camp duty. Such requests could be made (and, contrary to popular belief, in most cases, refusal to serve in a camp and/or murder civilians did not generally result in one’s execution. The aforementioned Dirlewanger was a notable exception), but how many teenagers know their rights now, much less in Nazi Germany?
I understand that Germany is trying to make up for decades of letting the actual murderers get off scot-free, but I think that putting on show trials of old men and women being charged as minors is not the answer.
Great comment AMG.
I am not aware of much German press devoted to all the German officers of means who went on to live luxuriously in South America/Argentina/Chile etc.
Prosecuting 98yr old low hanging fruit makes more sense, right?
Did you know that Hitler’s body was never found?
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=joe+rogan+hitler+episode&docid=603513424193922691&mid=DAED486F20F3F54CC915DAED486F20F3F54CC915&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
The Soviets found the bones of Hitler and Eva Braun, took them and the remains of Goebbels, his wife Magda, their six children (who they poisoned) and the dogs to the USSR for testing. They found a skull with a bullet hole in it that they assumed was Hitler’s but forensic testing showed that it was the skull of a woman in her 40s. I am assuming that the skull belonged to Frau Goebbels instead of Hitler but it doesn’t mean that they didn’t get Hitler’s bones. There is some evidence that his dentist identified his own work in a jawbone retrieved.
Of course, the Soviets could get any confession they wanted out of anyone and Stalin was particularly keen on proving that Hitler was still alive – even if he didn’t believe it himself – so he could keep the Allies working together for as long as possible. One of Hitler’s bodyguard’s – Rochus Misch – found that out the hard way when he agreed to accompany Erich Kempka – Hitler’s chauffeur – to the USSR as a caregiver only to end up in a KGB fortress, tortured in order to get a confession that Hitler was alive.
In 1970, KGB Chief Yuri Andropov felt the bones were pointless and, rather than risk someone finding a burial site and building a shrine, had them burned and dumped into the Elbe.
AMG, is your point that verification of der Fuhrer’s death is inconclusive.
No, he definitely died. There is enough testimony, particularly gathered by Captain Michael Musmanno in his long-lost film that, in my opinion, verifies that Hitler died on 04/30/45 by his own hand.
We just can’t know for certain if it was indeed his body that was recovered. The Soviets did a lousy job, but, when your boss is Josef Stalin, you do the job you do and hope it doesn’t come back to haunt you.
The other top Nazis were actually burned and the ashes scattered in the Isar river, presumably to prevent shrine building.
They had to do that with Rudolf Hess’ body, too. He was originally buried after he died but fake Nazis (aka Neo-Nazis) kept leaving stuff at his grave so they disinterred him, cremated him and dispersed his ashes.
Sorry, I shouldn’t type in a hurry. Besides “bodyguard’s” should be “bodyguards”, it wasn’t Kempka that Misch ended up in prison with but Hitler pilot Hans Baur.
One or two of the really big fish, notably Dr. Josef Mengele, escaped justice altogether (the same people who grabbed up Eichmann were sent to grab him, but lack of resources and a need to focus attention on issues with Egypt led Israel to call off the manhunt). There three other Nazi war criminals, two men and one woman, still knocking around out there. One is a Danish SS guard who the Danish authorities refuse to prosecute, one was a Jew-hunting commando who there is not enough evidence to bring charges against, and the woman was a radio operator at Auschwitz who was found unfit to stand trial.
This is the ultimate in virtue signaling.
These investigators and prosecutors are going to be out of a job really soon. They’ll probably be reassigned to hate crime or speech crime prosecutions.
“Never Forget” is a slogan I often hear when it comes to the Holocaust. With situations like this, how would it even be possible to forget? I know very little about the Jewish faith but appears from their actions in this arena that FORGIVENESS is not a major tenet. Prosecuting these aged people is wrong, and two wrongs will never make what the Jews suffered right. It is just plain mean at this point.
The point now is probably to just send a message to anyone who thinks they might want to try another Holocaust – they will pursue you for the rest of your life. It’s no longer a punishment, it’s a warning.
It’s also a warning to those who would aid or collaborate with those who would attempt something like that again. When the SS officer or the Gestapo officer shows up at your house and brings cake when you barely have bread and says he has a proposal for you, you need to tell him to go to hell. Everyone needs to tell him to go to hell.
Of course, that also means when the FBI show up and put the pressure on you to rat somebody out or to become their eyes and ears among your neighbors, you also need to tell them to go to hell, that you won’t be part of the establishments attempt to destroy the opposition. In fact with any kind of federal agent it’s better to keep your mouth shut, since lying to a federal agent is a felony and engaging them is an easy way to get yourself charged with that if you stumble or if you tell them something that you believe to be true but turns out not to be true.
I can’t believe that I’ve developed this level of distrust for the federal government, but, given what we’ve seen the last few years, I’m starting to believe that it’s just one big apparatus but mostly answers to one party and will do their bidding. The leader of the proud boys just got sentenced to 22 years for his involvement with January 6th. Standing alone, I’d say good, he helped foment annattack on federal property that could have resulted in a lot of people getting hurt or getting killed. Some people say some involved in that action did get killed, even though the only person killed was one of the protesters. However, I challenge anyone here to find someone from the summer riots of 2020 who got that level of a sentence. Go ahead and look, I can almost metaphysically guarantee you you will not find anything like that. Samantha Shader, an activist who appears to have never had any other job and who has been involved in other violent protests in the past got 6 years for throwing them all a tough cocktail at a policeman. Two lawyers who took similar actions only got about the same, when they could have been facing up to 20. But, since the actual nitty gritty of the prosecutions didn’t take place until the White House flipped, you suddenly had court filings from the Department of Justice that sounded more like Black Lives Matter propaganda. We are headed towards not just a two-tiered system of justice, but a three-tiered system of justice, where the elite always get off with a slap on the wrist, the liberal always get the minimum, and everybody else gets hit with the toughest penalty available.
It can’t happen here? Don’t be too sure. They didn’t think it was going to happen in Germany, it didn’t think it was going to happen in Cuba, and they didn’t think it was going to happen in Cambodia. The next thing you know, Castro’s goons are showing up to tell you you work for Castro now, Pol Pot’s black pajama-clad thugs are dragging you out to the killing fields to be clubbed to death with a pick or a hoe, and guys in greenish gray overcoats and peaked caps, with swastikas on their arm bands are putting you on a train that is going to a place we don’t need to talk about. Hitler was booted from power because he overreached and made the stupid decision to take on the Soviets. Pol Pot was thrown out because the Vietnamese did not want a genocidal tyrant next door who was causing huge numbers of refugees to flee to their country. To this day, the Castro regime remains in power in Cuba, because one small island in the Caribbean doesn’t matter very much, their Soviet backers are out of business, so they can’t be used as a jumping off point to give the United States a hard time, and Hugo Chavez, the leader of the next generation of leftist caudillos, is now dead over a decade and no other charismatic, America hating loudmouth has stepped up to take his place.
Steve-O- is definitely dialed into the insidious progression of authoritarianism currently making its way into more and more areas of our society.
His second paragraph commentary on the FBI and how they make use of neighbors to do their dirty surveillance/harassment work is totally accurate and true. I live this every day within my own neighborhood/community.
They intimidate and lie to persuade people that someone is bad, a threat of some sort, etc. This is also a tactic utilized to revenge personal grudges by *special agents* and other LE. For example, romance gone bad and beautiful wife/girlfriend leaves the guy, but it turns out that he is an insecure asshole who cannot take no for an answer and so he puts a kind of hit on the woman thereby making her life a living hell.
The FBI increasingly resembles the East German Stasi, post WWII.
“Never Again” is the most common slogan of Holocaust remembrance, introduced by Meir Kahane. The idea is that this genocide and violent destruction of one particular people, rising to an almost industrial level, and far too successful, must never happen again. The Jews aren’t alone in this. Other peoples won’t let major destruction be forgotten either. Thankfully a few of the 600 intellectuals and public leaders arrested at the start of the Armenian Genocide did survive and eventually put pen to paper to let it be known what happened and make sure it wasn’t forgotten. The Irish still won’t let the famines of 1845-1852 be forgotten, where a million Irishmen starved to death while the English landlords exported food. And the list goes on and on. Eventually the Irish achieved their independence, and the Armenians took matters into their own hands and assassinated a number of those who had been behind the genocide. I think at this point the Jews just want to be as thorough to the Nazis as the Nazis were to them.
“I know very little about the Jewish faith but appears from their actions in this arena …”
The German prosecutors are Jewish? How do you know?
“…that FORGIVENESS is not a major tenet. ”
I humbly suggest you look up Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish year.
Best,
Alicia
Humbly Alicia, actions and deeds, not words.
Yes and no. Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement and is more about repentance and atoning for the sins of the past year. Forgiveness and mercy to your fellow man is a bit uneven in Judaism, which endorses “an eye for an eye” in the Old Testament. The idea of mercy and forgiveness as a central tenet really comes into its own with Judaism’s outgrowth, Christianity. I’m not saying Jewish people are by nature vengeful, most of those I know are no more and no less ethical than anyone else. I have to say I disliked working in a firm where 8 of 11 attorneys were Jewish and I was one of the three who wasn’t. Two of the three major partners were money-grubbers, and the top partner was a sexual harasser. Several of them looked down their noses at me, and one insisted on telling stories of Judaica every chance he got, which began to wear on my patience after a time. However, most of these factors have nothing to do with Judaism and everything to do with being greedy, lecherous, and arrogant, which no faith has a monopoly on.
I maintain a healthy respect for the religion and the people generally, since the days of learning to sing in Hebrew and Yiddish for the yearly Holocaust Memorial program in college. Ashkenazi Judaism was the most heavily targeted religious and ethnic group of all in the 20th Century. They also had the misfortune (like the Armenians before them) to be targeted by a regime that had their destruction as a stated goal and priority (which is pretty messed-up thinking, objectively) AND the plans and capability to follow through on it, at a time when the rest of the world was tired, disillusioned, and least likely to take action or intervene.
Hi Steve-
Thanks for responding. I’m always interested in your take on issues. Erudition is certainly one of your strong suits.
“However, most of these factors have nothing to do with Judaism and everything to do with being greedy, lecherous, and arrogant, which no faith has a monopoly on.”
Bingo. Just as there are twice a year Christians (Christmas and Easter) there are twice a year Jews (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.) An adherent to any faith is going to fall short at times, if not often; human beings being what they are. The OP stated“I know very little about the Jewish faith but appears from their actions in this arena …”. Whose “their?” The German prosecutors? Some Jews? All Jews? Israel? The diaspora? I’m confusled; but that’s nothing new.
Back to the topic at hand: I feel about this case the way I felt about the Leslie Van Houten parole question. What is there to be gained by prosecuting this elderly man? It’s one thing to be 19 and under the sway of Charles Manson. It’s quite another to be 17, and under the control of The Third Reich.
Yes, I know about the Jewish people who just do the High Holy Days, although most of them do Chanukkah and Passover also, so their kids have celebrations concurrent with Christmas and Easter. You are right that the original post here was not well phrased. We don’t even know if there are any Jewish people involved in this prosecution. You have a point that there is little to be gained by jailing a man in his 90s. However, your ex’s family (I remember you mentioned being married to a Jewish LEO for a time) might feel differently, particularly if they lost people to the Holocaust. People I knew died on 9/11. I almost died on 9/11. Since that day I’ve never looked at Muslims the same way, and I cheered the extrajudicial killing of the men who masterminded it. I’ll also add that if, say some other mastermind behind that terrible day were grabbed in Europe and jailed for life, since there is no death penalty there, I’d be just fine with an aged, forgotten terrorist mastermind still peering from his cell at 90, and only leaving his cell feet first on a cooling board. I also have no problem that the French locked Henri Petain up for life also. He collaborated with the Nazis. There is a deliberately uncomfortable flight of stairs you can descend behind Notre Dame in Paris, into the monument to the unknown deportees, all those who got sent east on his watch, whence few of them returned. It’s VERY hard for me to accept the idea of giving someone a pass on that just because of his age. Some crimes are just so bad you can never get a pass. I am disgusted that Theodore McCarrick, the former cardinal who not only protected abusers but did some abusing himself, was found unfit to stand trial, and my only comfort is that soon he will have to go before the highest judge of all, who is likely to send him to a very hot eternal destination.
Dang, you have a good memory!
another side- I am waiting for the German government to acknowledge that all those fanciful little towns that attract so many tourists were destroyed by both the Allies and the Nazis. What is seen today, for the most part, was rebuilt by the Allies’ money in the post-war period.
No to mention those huge autobahns.
This is what a 17 year old guard would have seen. Would have stood over.
Point? A 17-year-old male would have grown up under Hitler, and been a member of the Hitler youth, totally indoctrinated and without either free will or the agency to make any resistance at all.
The same cannot be said for the highly motivated enthusiastic violent Antifa bullies.