Another court case of an ex-SS man in Hamburg

Discussion in 'The Holocaust' started by Lindele, Jul 8, 2020.

  1. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    A German (93) is at present in court for his role as a 17 or18 year old SS man in the concentration camp Stutthof.

    The enticement is 3 years imprisonment according to German .youth law for accessory to murder.


    The prosecutor stated:”It is absurd to believe that he did not know about the murder ongoing around him.”

    And the prosecutor went on:” It is not enough to not watching what is happening or ignoring and waiting for the end of the war. A soldier can leave the watch tower, put down the rifle and declare, I cannot have this anymore.”

    I hope I translated it correctly.


    I admire this prosecutor, let's now wait for the ruling of the judges.

    Stefan.
     
  2. JimHerriot

    JimHerriot Ready for Anything


    And if anyone should doubt why these people should be pursued, please see the attachments to my post here;

    The Man Who Saw Too Much

    Always remember, never forget,

    Jim.
     
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  3. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    As Christopher Browning so chillingly described in his book Ordinary Men, Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution, the perpetrators were often not the raving Nazi's we imagine.
     
  4. ltdan

    ltdan Nietenzähler

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  5. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    17 or 18 in 1945 ?
    12 years of the Nazis in power.
    Since he was 5.
    Would have been in the Hitler Youth etc.
    Brain washed into going along with it.

    Safer guarding a camp than getting a transfer to the front though.
     
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  6. Pat Atkins

    Pat Atkins Well-Known Member

    As Owen says, at that age he'll have been a product of a totalitarian regime for most of his life, and in all likelihood lacked the same moral compass and/or ability to stand up to authority that someone a few years older - or from a more liberal regime - might be expected to have. I've taught teenagers: many are easily-led and biddable, and many lack enough life experience to successfully temper excess and rebuff peer pressure. Not an excuse at all, and in truth one or two are just horrible young people; but, perhaps, an explanatory factor for Bruno Dey's lack of resistance to criminal orders.

    On the other hand, I'd be very surprised indeed if my uncles who served in WW2, compassionate and decent men, would have had much hesitation at all in wanting Dey shot. The crime he is accused of is disgusting, and the precedent created by the Demjanjuk case (basically, that being a guard at a camp means you are automatically complicit in the murder of its inmates) seems reasonable. He is reported as showing little sorrow for the misery and death he supervised, and if he did say "I don't want to keep going over the past... I don't bear any guilt for what happened back then", then he's a morally-bankrupt, crass and evasive man who's trying to cover up, at the very least.

    Personally, I believe it entirely right that we continue to prosecute those accused of war crimes despite the passage of time. The transparent and just application of law is in itself a statement - and, you'd hope, a defence - against regimes such as the Nazis.
     
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  7. ltdan

    ltdan Nietenzähler

    I will not go into detail about the verdict and its real motives in order not to violate the masonic rule.
    But here are a few facts that prove the complete failure of the German post-war justice system. I deliberately limited it to 1980 to keep it in line with the forum rules (to the best of my knowlegde and belief):

    Most of the war criminals and almost all of the important officials of the IIIrd Reich enjoyed comprehensive amnesties. Many of them quickly reached high positions again (Famous example: Hans Filbinger pronounced death sentences as a naval judge until 1945, after the war he even became Prime Minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg)

    The German state dealt with the victims differently.
    Nazi victims were only allowed to submit applications for victims' pensions until 1969 and only in Western countries, whereas Hitler's fighters could submit applications forever and worldwide.
    While none of the members of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS can be expelled for crimes, the situation is quite different with the concentration camp survivors: The Federal Compensation Act applies to them, and there are many reasons for exclusion.

    While 1.8 billion marks were paid to the real victims under the Compensation Act in 1978, Hitler's fighters received seven times as much: 12.7 billion marks - an estimated 5% of them were definitely war criminals, which makes roundabout 637 million D-Mark.
    Just under half of the total sum went to widows, including those of Hitler's top blood judge Freisler, then president of the People's Court. The wealthy widow received a monthly supplementary pension of several hundred marks because her husband died in a bomb attack. Reason for the supplementary pension: Her husband would have made a career after the war and earned accordingly.
    Sacrificial pension also for the deceased widow of Reinhard Heydrich. The planner of the Holocaust died in a political assassination. Reason for the victim's pension: this too was a war mission.
    Thies Christophersen was a lieutenant in the Auschwitz concentration camp, after the war he also became a victim's pensioner. Besides he wrote the book "The Auschwitz Lie" and became a Neo-Nazi hero.
    The list could be continued as long as you like. But tonight it´s too tedious and embarrassing for me....

    This was the original sin of the young Federal Republic and makes me think certain actions are merely moral fig leaves
    Have a nice evening, Gentlemen
     
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  8. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    the judges will finish with their ruling on 23 July.
    The former guard's last words were that he is terribly sorry for what happened in this camp and elsewhere in Germany at the time. This must never happen again.

    Stefan.
     
  9. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    Indeed Stanley Milgram's experiments in the early 60s showed how obedience to authority figures even when this means conducting inhumane acts is ingrained even in 'liberal' democratic societies and would therefore be even greater in this circumstance. However it's all the more reason why the legal system needs to signal that this is not to be accepted.
     
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  10. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    Found guilty, two year suspended sentence.
     
  11. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    The 93 year old man in a wheelchair was convicted for aid to murder5232 inmates for three years on probation.
    The judge said: "you could have asked to join a fighting SS unit which may have meant your death soon after. But you decided to hang on to this guard position."

    Stefan.
     
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  12. Harry Ree

    Harry Ree Very Senior Member

    I think a revisit to the situation after the war when a number of war crime perpetrators went unpunished as western Allies recognised that the USSR was the potential enemy and in a number of cases recruited former NAZI personalities to work for them in roles such intelligence .Klaus Barbie,the Butcher of Lyon was recruited by a US military agency and remained protected until much later, out of protection, and living in Bolivia,he was arrested and brought back to France.

    Another was Lammerding who commanded the Das Reich division which committed the atrocities in south west France in June 1944. He was found guilty and sentenced in absentia at the Bordeaux Military Tribunal of February 1953.Found in the British zone,his extradition request by the French was refused by the British military authorities.Postwar,he became a successful businessman in Dusseldorf after being on the run in Schleswig Holstein and died in 1971.His extradition was denied on the grounds that "unless there is incontestable evidence that the accused has committed murder".The case against Lammerding was thought to be in doubt by the British.

    Lammerding never stood in the dock to prove his innocence,he was never brought to book on excesses committed under his command throughout the war whether it was in Russia or Western Europe.

    So it no wonder that the small fish escaped scrutiny until the will and resources were brought to bear on their past deeds.Further early postwar,so deep was the totalitarian effect of the Nazi Party on the judiciary that it is recorded that 80% of the judiciary had occupied the same roles during the Third Reich regime.
     
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  13. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    I like the term small fish, like in German- kleines Licht.
    Stefan.
     
  14. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    As the German historian Annika Mombauer and others have pointed out, prior to German reunification, various West German governments wished to promote the line that Germany's crimes of WW2 were the result of the people being mislead by a number of spectacularly aberative 'monsters' and that a propensity to both militarianism and racialism were not an inherent property of parts of German society. This was intended to counter the antipathy to German reunification manifested by a number of European politicians (including Margaret Thatcher) who thought a unified Germany would be too powerful to be trusted. Chasing down and prosecuting the big fish supported this 'story' (look we've purged the monsters and we're safe) but putting the ordinary man in the street in the dock tended to show just how far down the "banality of evil" and the willingness to participate in the crimes extended. Letting the small fry fade away unnoticed preserved the line that 1933 -1945 was a freak event.
     
  15. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    In the news article Pat posted it says...
    "His defense has insisted that he did not join the SS voluntarily before serving at the camp from August 1944 to April 1945, ending up assigned there because a heart condition excluded him from frontline service. "
     
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  16. Robert-w

    Robert-w Banned

    Given that he's reached 93 can't have been that serious a defect
     
  17. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    Very true, but I refrained from including that in my message to avoid comments from an ignored member.

    Stefan.
     

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