Given that we’re losing World War II vets at a prodigious rate, I’m surprised to see a local story about an SS fugitive here in Philadelphia. If they want to see this guy brought to justice, the system better move faster than it normally does, because this guy isn’t going to be far behind. Of course, I don’t know what all the hoopla is about. If you listen to our opponents in the gun control movement, since the Nazi government was duly elected, all good citizens were required to abide by its edicts. Did they really expect this guy to join an insurrection? It’s a well known fact that insurrection is, like, the worst thing in the world.
5 thoughts on “Not Something You See These Days”
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Here’s a sincere question, that I hope won’t seem to imply sympathy for fascists over communists: Has there ever been a Russian war criminal from WWII pursued as relentlessly as Nazis and their collaborators are.
There were a few, you know. If I were to set my European relatives (who went into cattle cars bound for Siberia, in 1941) to naming names, I’m sure they would come up with something resembling a small phonebook, and some of those butchers had to have made it to the United States.
Or don’t we pursue Russian war criminals because we were their allies, and gave them the materiel to do what they did?
(This time its my ethnic cynicism talking.)
I always have mixed feelings about cases like this. I doubt the nazis advertised for “prison guard at extermination camp”. Did he have any choice about where he was assigned or what his job was? And even though I am certain he knew what was going on there after working the job for a while, what was he supposed to do, quit? Shoot his boss? Steal a train and run thousands of Jews across the border to the Soviet Union where they’d be treated like heroes?
There’s also the fact that any kind of evidence this late in the game is about impossible to contest, and he’s going to die soon anyway. What purpose does it serve to prosecute some poor schmuck who couldn’t have done anything about it?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the nazis did allow guards at the extermination camps to quit if it gave them the willies. But I’ve never heard of it.
The gov’t has tried to strip him of his citzenship in the past. This time it is Germany that is after him.
They got all the big shots and worked their way down from there many years ago. Now they are after some very old men who were kids, privates in the last days of the war. That is all that is left. The Germans can not even put them in prison. They just put them in a nursing home and claim we have the nazi in custody.
“run thousands of Jews across the border to the Soviet Union where they’d be treated like heroes?”
They’d only have been treated as heroes for the few minutes between the time they came under Russian authority, and they were handed a rifle (or not) and sent to the front; deported to Siberia where the majority would die; or executed on the spot as “exploiters,” depending on how much the Soviets knew about their background.
There is a BIG difference between the SS camp guards and other members of the military. When they first started the camps, they were run by the regular army. That didn’t work out so well. The rank and file soldiers could not do the work. It was turned over to the SS in part because the job was so nasty, you had to be a true believer. Furthermore, when the “i was following orders” defense was tried at Nuremberg, it was shown that the death penalty punishment for refusing ot follow orders that existed everywhere else in the german military did not apply to the SS in camp operations. By your very presence there you are guilty of being an active, enthusiastic supporter of the horror.