Ex-Nazi "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz" Asks for 'Forgiveness'

[c.d.]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ex-nazi-bookkeeper-of-auschwitz-asks-for-forgiveness/ar-AAbqgga?ocid=DELLDHP

c.d.

[Robert]

300,000 charges of accessory to murder and if found guilty he faces up to 15 years in jail????

The mind can only boggle.

[c.d.]

Hello Robert,

True enough but since he is now 93 it essentially means that the rest of his life will be spent in jail.

c.d.

[GUT]

Yep at 93 not much difference between 15 years and 500 years.

In fact he probably won't even get to prison and n some countries he'll have a better life ina prison hospital than rotting away at home.

[Errata]

It's not for him to ask for forgiveness, it is for those left behind to offer it or not as they see fit. He is what he is. And he's lived with it this long, he'll die with it. No one ever "deserves" forgiveness. They earn it or they don't. They get it or they don't. The wronged party does what is right for them, and the transgressor lives with that result. Hopefully with grace, often without. But he doesn't get to ask.

[GUT]

No one deserves forgiveness. I agree

It is a gift in the control of the giver. Agree

But one is surely entitled to ask for it, but should realise that the answer may well be "no way."

[Harry D]

Selective morality.

Let's forget the Nazi scientists left off during Operation Paperclip.

[Errata]

No one deserves forgiveness. I agree

It is a gift in the control of the giver. Agree

But one is surely entitled to ask for it, but should realise that the answer may well be "no way."

Entitled... given the right to...

If a person victimizes another person, Hurts or attacks another person, terrorizes another person, what gives them the right to intrude on them further and make them hear a plea for something they do not deserve?

What rights does a rapist (for example) get to contact their victim whose stability may be fragile, whose world may still upside down and ask for forgiveness? To intrude, to horn it, to possible revictimize because they have some god given right to ask for forgiveness?

The language of forgiveness is all wrong. As are the expectations. Forgiveness is not a call and response kinda thing. Neither are apologies really, but it's a little different. Forgiveness is a gift. I don't get to enter your life in any way to ask for a present from you. I don't get to call during dinner and say "Hey, I would really appreciate it if you gave me a gift. Any gift is fine, but I'm quite fond of chess sets." And without actually contacting you there is no other way to ask for a gift that is not rude and intrusive. Am I going to stand outside your work holding up a sign asking for a present? Am I going to write an article in the local paper asking you for a gift? No. First of all that bizarre, nd secondly what is the worth of a gift you have to ask for? If you wanted to get me something you would just do it. Or you would tell me and ask me what I wanted. But there is no socially acceptable way for me to come to you and ask.

[Robert]

The case is sub judice and at the moment he is officially not guilty, so I won't comment on this individual case. But I would just say that, in general, if a person has done an evil thing and is subsequently found gullty of doing it, then for that person to ask for forgiveness is the merest tosh. If a person really feels a huge burden of guilt over something then he will hand himself in to the authorities and accept whatever punishment he is given, so that he can try and expiate his crime. Or else he will commit suicide or something. He will not wait until he has been tracked down and captured before talking about remorse, forgiveness and all the rest of it.

[Mayerling]

Selective morality.

Let's forget the Nazi scientists left off during Operation Paperclip.

Have to agree with you Harry, especially regarding those scientific scoundrels.

A number of years ago I watched a program about the poison gas and chemical programs of the Japanese army in World War II, wherein they used Chinese, Korean, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Siamese, and Prisoners of War to conduct experiments on. Their headquarters was in the Manchuria area. As the war entered it's final ever-souring phase, the Japanese officer (a General - I can't recall his name) in charge noted that the Russians were building up their presence in the area above the northern Manchuria border, and might soon end their peaceful arrangement with Japan in order to be an Ally against Japan when it was beaten. He quietly arranged to have a plane fly him to an area under American control, bringing with him many copies of his files. The Americans soon "paper clipped" him, and he ended up helping our poison gas and chemical warfare program into the 1960s. He was the only World War II Japanese general to have pensions from both Japan and the United States!

Jeff

[Graham]

Operation Paperclip was a completely and totally cynical move by the USA to deny any Nazi rocket technology not only to the Soviet Union but also to its ally the United Kingdom. Truman stated that Paperclip personnel should not include any known members of the Nazi Party...ha, ha, ha! This is one aspect of the end-game of World War Two that the United States should be thoroughly ashamed of. Those Nazi scientists were treated like frigging Hollywood celebrities - would Truman have felt the same had New York been subject to V2 attacks in the same way was London and Rotterdam? I doubt it.

Graham

[Graham]

For a crime of the sheer magnitude of The Holocaust there can be no forgiveness, either on a national or a personal level. I hope that the 'Bookkeeper Of Auschwitz" burns in Hell, along with the tens of thousands of other sub-humans who obeyed without question their orders from above. How a supposedly modern, supposedly civilised, supposedly even Christian society such as Germany between 1933 and 1945 could have done what was done, is almost completely beyond my belief. They got off lightly, all of them. And yet there they are. the most powerful, the richest, nation in Europe, telling formerly occupied and raped countries like Greece how they must succumb to the power of the mighty Berlin-backed Euro. This really is the World Gone Wrong.

Graham

[Harry D]

A number of years ago I watched a program about the poison gas and chemical programs of the Japanese army in World War II, wherein they used Chinese, Korean, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Siamese, and Prisoners of War to conduct experiments on. Their headquarters was in the Manchuria area. As the war entered it's final ever-souring phase, the Japanese officer (a General - I can't recall his name) in charge noted that the Russians were building up their presence in the area above the northern Manchuria border, and might soon end their peaceful arrangement with Japan in order to be an Ally against Japan when it was beaten. He quietly arranged to have a plane fly him to an area under American control, bringing with him many copies of his files. The Americans soon "paper clipped" him, and he ended up helping our poison gas and chemical warfare program into the 1960s. He was the only World War II Japanese general to have pensions from both Japan and the United States!

Yes, Unit 731. The Japanese scientists performed all kinds of abominable experiments on the prisoners. They would rape and impregnate prisoners just to dissect the babies, inject subjects with diseases, and conduct weapon tests on human targets. And like you say, the senior scientists were all secretly pardoned by the United States in exchange for the research. I never even knew about it until a friend of mine mentioned it in passing some years back. I very much doubt it's part of the history curriculum either. Same goes for the Holodomor, the man-made genocide of millions of Ukrainian farmers and their families by Stalinist Russia. Where are the voices for those victims? Why is it the Holocaust that dominates our media? Why is the trial of some 90-odd year old ex-Nazi headline news? The Zionist lobby, that's why.

[Graham]

Harry D,

you are correct - there is much less concern for Stalinist genocide than for German (Nazi) genocide. Why? Simple - the Russians were 'on our side' during WW2. Churchill said that he would make a pact with the Devil to overthrow Nazi Germany, and he did - with Comrade Stalin.

I am not a Zionist, nor even Jewish, and I don't even think that the trial of some poor 90+ year old former concentration-camp guard should really make headline news nearly 70 years after the event, but even so I do believe that Germany got off very lightly. I fully support Greece's claim of 290 million Euros compensation for the occupation of Greece by Germany during WW2, and I only wish other countries, such as France, Belgium, Holland, and more would do the same.

Graham

[Roy Corduroy]

What does the US have to be ashamed for recruiting Nazi rocket scientists after the war? The Soviet U "recruited" Nazi scientists too.

I'm not ashamed of anything we did in the entire history of the cold war. Nothing. I'm just glad we won. And I continue to donate $ to get the Jews out of Russia.

Because it not over, not really.

Roy