Ex-Auschwitz Guard, Now 93, Charged With 300,000 Counts of Accessory to Murder

[Robert]

Thanks for that, Phil. It's hard to find the words for these things, but you managed it.

I can't remember what age I was when I saw the images, but they sure made an impression on me.

Hope you and yours are well.

[Harry D]

And why call the Bolsheviks Jewish? Stalin wasn't Jewish, and Trotsky was in exile. Stalin killed all sorts. He was very fair, and didn't discriminate - he killed Jews too.

Because Bolshevism was Jewish?

Obviously my remark about Uncle Joe being America's best friend was to be taken ironically, but the point remains that Stalin was on the winning side and therefore the crime of the Holodomor gets brushed under the carpet, when it was arguably even worse than what the Nazis carried out. Where is the voice for those poor people?

And the Nazis weren't too discriminatory, either. Slavs, Poles, Gypsies and even Germans themselves weren't spared by the Holocaust. It's no wonder people believe that the Jews have a monopoly on suffering when these victims are often overlooked.

[Phil Carter]

Hello Robert,

My Dad worked for the little known underground unit from London. He knew, he recalled, of the whole nazi plan about the Jews, and other groups right at the start of the war.

One day, when I was about 7, he called me into the living room where he was watching, "All our Yesterdays".. one of the last programmes in the long running series on ITV after "The Big Match" I recall? (perhaps just before?)

The programme was about the discovery of one or another of the concentration camps. Dad said... "just sit here and watch this"....

As I watched, I saw the grainy black and white film on the tv, and as I sat there watching, I noticed Dad reaching into into his pocket for his hanky.

When the programme finished he simply said...

"Son...never.....ever.... never ever forget this... and if you are ever in the situation where you can make a difference to stop things like this happening again... don't hestitate. Do it. Just never, ever forget it"

Many years later, my own eldest son was to travel from Norway to various concentration camps vis the famous "white buses" programme for 16 and 17 year olds, accompanied by 100 other youngsters of the same age, and their guide....a holocaust survivor.

All I told him before he traveled were the same words my father had told me. "Whatever you see...never...ever forget it... and if you can influence this not happening again... do it".

That was in 1998 he traveled there. He said that every youngster..hardest to softest..bully to weakling, girl and boy... cried their eyes out on that trip at least once.

He was chosen to lay a rememberance tribute on behalf of the whole party at Auschwitz. A short while later.. he was standing with the whole group as two or three Neo Nazis walked around the corner and started shouting abusive things at the whole group. My son was just about to...with a few others... run straight at them when the elderly man, the guide, just said... "No!... Don't give them the pleasure. Just remember... whilst you are strong... this will never happen again..hopefully. Just turn your backs."

And they did. And my son has never forgotten it either.

Things will happen all over the world in the name of different causes. Someone somewhere will say the immortal words... "Never forget this" in The Former Yugoslavia...in Syria, in Iraq perhaps... I don't know.

But what I do know is that ignoring what a 90 odd year old did 70 years is not correct. It isnt about revenge.. it is about never, ever forgetting. It may just help the future generations a little to show that THIS generation did not forgive and forget. Not The Holocaust.

And NO... my family is not Jewish nor ever has been.

I just say..."Thanks Dad" whenever I see anything like this. Schindlers List is my favourite film... and the ending always make me cry. I am not ashamed to say it either.

Stay well all.



Phil

[Robert]

"Nazi Germany hunted down it's own people, and the people in the countries they occupied. They were not targeting the Jews of enemy countries." This to me is a sheer contradiction.

No, my mention of the Middle East was due to two things :

1. The letting off of Nazi scientists in order to aid the struggle against Communism, juxtaposed with the somersaults the West has performed in the Middle East, arming one bunch of nutters in order to hit another bunch of nutters. Two examples of realpolitik, but I'm only interested in the former.

and

2. An off and on perusal of the comments section of newspapers like "The Guardian," which I think you'd have to read for yourself to get their full lunatic measure.

I'm not aware of any genocide in the Middle East. Actually I don't like the word 'genocide.' A murder is a murder is a murder.

I repeat that I am not talking about this particular man's case. That is sub judice and out of bounds.

[Roy Corduroy]

It said he was a clerk, counting money and possessions taken from the victims.

I read a book on this subject "Hitler's Beneficiaries" which described the system whereby the Holocaust, and all of the military conquests were used to fund the war. And also to keep German citizens placated to an extent. Because the Nazis were socialists. They had all sorts of things going, sort of early nanny state.

Anyway, it was very good book, and about half way through reading I realized I would have to re-think a lot of what I had read before.

Roy

[Errata]

Errata, with respect I think your way of thinking is highly dangerous. Even immediately after the war, some Germans and Japanese were let off, because they had scientific or medical knowledge, or even simply because the USSR was by then the main threat. Not nice. Come to think of it, if a surgeon were to bump off his wife tomorrow, would we let him go because he is a 'valuable resource' as he his capable of saving lives?

That's on the utllitarian aspect. On the purely moral aspect, I have no problems with a survivor of these camps exacting vengeance, via the State, against someone who is guilty of murder.

Please don't bring in the Middle East and the various groups that the West has supported over the years, because I'm not going into that quicksand. I'm only interested in the Holocaust aspect.

He's not being charged with murder. He's being charged as an accessory to murder, which includes accessory after the fact. His job was to sort and catalog the belongings of prisoners and victims. He knew of the murders. He collected the luggage and valuables from the cattle cars as they came in. He witnessed. He said he committed no crime. Thats probably not true, but while he was as armed as every other Nazi in the camp, his job did not lend itself to killing people. He was a clerk. Which the prosecution agrees with.

"'He helped the Nazi regime benefit economically, and supported the systematic killings,' state prosecutors in the city of Hannover said in a statement."

He sorted the valuables so that they could be sold. He was a loyal Nazi. Neither of these are good things. But while I might heartily condemn his work in Auschwitz, there are people responsible for those murders. There are people who beat those prisoners, shot them, gassed them, tortured them. And those people were not clerks. Why go for the fence who took the stolen goods when you could go for the guy who murdered your loved ones and took those goods off their corpses? If this guy had been a guard, a technician, a camp commander, someone who was in charge of the prisoners and/or the murders, I could get behind this. But this man is not being accused of killing anyone. He's not even accused of helping to kill anyone. He's being accused of sorting out possessions to be sold to finance the camp. He wasn't even the one doing the selling. This I think begs pause.

I am well aware of the Great Nazi Scientist Draft of '45. And as an American Jew sometimes I'm a little torn on it. Wernher Von Braun was clearly a Nazi. He was very involved in the war effort. And if he committed war crimes, they were on the war side of things, not the internal side. Genocide is considered a war crime, but in the case of the Holocaust (and several other genocides) it was an internal matter. Nazi Germany hunted down it's own people, and the people in the countries they occupied. They were not targeting the Jews of enemy countries. Certainly they did not target British synagogues for example, which was a viable option for them. In Nazi Germany, there was the war, and there was the Holocaust. Two separate things linked by expanding geography. We can't charge every Nazi. A lot of people were Nazis. Some members of my own family were Nazis, so that makes things awkward for me. One of the most compassionate men in modern history was a good Nazi. It's complicated. So I am not a fan of the science smuggling. On the other hand, I recognize that the scientists who came here probably had nothing to do with genocide.

I have no intention of bringing in the Middle East, and I'm not sure why you would think I was going to bring it up, but I have to say it's rather telling that your thoughts immediately went there. I assume that this was in reference to my comments about the First World aiding genocide, and it's true that we have a lousy record. But I was only referring to the Holocaust.

[Robert]

Harry, Stalin was painted as a friend of America and Britain between the years 1941 - 1945. He most emphatically wasn't deemed a friend before this. In fact, it has often been claimed (with some justification, I feel) that the democracies went easy on Hitler during the 1930s because he was felt to be a useful ally against Communism.

And why call the Bolsheviks Jewish? Stalin wasn't Jewish, and Trotsky was in exile. Stalin killed all sorts. He was very fair, and didn't discriminate - he killed Jews too.

[Harry D]

Like I said, plenty of despicable acts were carried out during the events of WW2 by both sides, and trying to quantify evil is very shaky ground indeed.

The Holocaust is big business. Gotta keep it in the social consciousness, not because of any lofty ideals about justice, but because it's being used to impose white guilt on Gentiles in order that we'll turn a blind eye on Israel's own acts of genocide. Stalin and the Jewish Bolsheviks wiped out millions of Ukrainian men, women and children through the engineered starvation of the Holodmor, however, this atrocity receives precious little media attention when compared to the Holocaust, and why's that? Because Joe was America's best friend and the Allies couldn't be seen to represent values of freedom and democracy when it was rubbing shoulders with its own genocidal tyrant.

Not a popular belief, I'm sure, but the truth seldom is.

[Robert]

Errata, with respect I think your way of thinking is highly dangerous. Even immediately after the war, some Germans and Japanese were let off, because they had scientific or medical knowledge, or even simply because the USSR was by then the main threat. Not nice. Come to think of it, if a surgeon were to bump off his wife tomorrow, would we let him go because he is a 'valuable resource' as he his capable of saving lives?

That's on the utllitarian aspect. On the purely moral aspect, I have no problems with a survivor of these camps exacting vengeance, via the State, against someone who is guilty of murder.

Please don't bring in the Middle East and the various groups that the West has supported over the years, because I'm not going into that quicksand. I'm only interested in the Holocaust aspect.

[dahler101]

Bringing charges against a 93 year old for something he did 70 years ago seems insane to me, especially if, as Errata believes, his actions have been known all this time.

I know it seems insane, being that Oskar Groening is 93, but so many of the victims of the holocaust have not lived to see even 10 years of age. This is on a Jack the Ripper site, most people believe that he was responsive for 5 murders, if there was a chance to bring the Ripper to justice (were he still alive) we would take it no? the Nazi's were responsible for millions of deaths, that is not including the deaths involved in war. Groening fuelled this terrible injustice and is both directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of 300,000, and unlike Herman Goering (who believed that it was his moral duty) this man fled, like a coward and so many others to south america, were he lead a long a fruitful life, and perhaps breathed a sigh of relief because who would pursue him after so long?

Oskar Groening's trail is as relevant today as it was 40 years ago. People forget, and because people forget further atrocities like the holocaust are allowed to be committed.

[pinkmoon]

[QUOTE=Ginger;309771]Bringing charges against a 93 year old for something he did 70 years ago seems insane to me, especially if, as Errata believes, his actions have been known all this time.[/QUOte.
There are crimes and crimes and crimes and crimes and crimes and crimes and then there's the holocaust it dosnt matter this was seventy years ago this man had the choice to do what he did like the vast majority of the participants of the holocaust he needs to go on trial and then the whole world can be shown again the end result of racism .

[Ginger]

Bringing charges against a 93 year old for something he did 70 years ago seems insane to me, especially if, as Errata believes, his actions have been known all this time.

[Errata]

Don't ask me to forgive you, Harry. That is quite beyond my powers, since neither I nor any member of my family was on the receiving end of Auschwitz.

My family was, and it is farcical. Not that I think the Holocaust is one the same level as Hiroshima, Dresden, etc. Actively hunting and murdering your own civilian population is a whole other thing that is not determined by war.

But this guy is not Mengele fleeing prosecution and hiding in Argentina. He was not an irreplaceable wheel in the genocide machine. He was a guy who did a terrible thing for several years. He surrendered when all of Germany surrendered. He was available for any charges to be brought against him, and he was eligible to be charged at Nuremburg, or by any civilian or military authority since. And for 70 years no one brought charges. He has not lied about his involvement. He is accountable for his actions.

First of all, any crimes committed in Auschwitz were committed in Poland. A whole other country that while occupied by Nazi Germany, was not Germany. So that seems to be an insurmountable legal hurdle right there. Secondly, the man is 92, and his odds of living until the verdict much less the sentence is pretty small. Thirdly, if this is the man I think it is, he has been remarkably open about why he was a loyal Nazi, and has been speaking about it for certainly the last 15 years that I know of, probably much longer. Self aware former Nazis are a valuable resource for the end goal, and encouraging people who participate in genocide to keep their mouth shut until the end of days because they can get prosecuted at 93 is in no ones best interest.

And most of all, the people who died are dead. Nothing can bring them back. Nothing will bring them justice. The entire First World would need to be on trial for that, and that's impossible. Sure the Germans committed genocide. And France and Russia and Great Britain and Italy and the United States helped them do it. The end goal is to stop genocide. Never again. And we can't stop it if we don't know how to predict it and nip it in the bud. So punishing the people we need to understand is a bad idea. I know what this guy did. I don't have any ill will towards him. I don't want to split a beer with him, but I don't think anyone is going to gain by putting him on trial. 70 years is a long time to hold on to resentment, fear, and false righteousness. Let it go.

The only possible benefit I can see is that I hear from some German friends that Holocaust education there has apparently become nonexistent in the last 10 years or more. This would ensure the topic was widely known, but I'm not sure that a good enough reason.

[belinda]

It doesn't matter how long it has been what these people did must be accounted for.

[Robert]

Don't ask me to forgive you, Harry. That is quite beyond my powers, since neither I nor any member of my family was on the receiving end of Auschwitz.