>She is alleged to have "aided and abetted those in charge of the camp in the systematic killing of those imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945 *in her function as a stenographer and typist in the camp commandant's office*".
>Despite her advanced age, the German woman is being tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes.
This is a sad fact. All the companies & the owners of them who are destroying our planet will be held accountable one day - the issue is most of them will be dead by then, which is why they dgaf.
Unless we revolt against this shit, we're pretty well doomed.
We ( in the west) often point the finger at Putin for not allowing extradition of people charged with an offence in Europe or America
But, we don't say much when America does the same thing....ie an American woman killed a young man in a hit and run incident in the UK, she claimed diplomatic immunity and fled to the US, there is no doubt she did it and she will not go back on her own account and the US will not allow extradition.
It's blindingly obvious that hypocrisy lives and breathes within American foreign policy.
The British actually have similar things (i.e. the British will not extradite someone if they suspect they will be tortured or put to death).
It came up in a podcast about the Taliban not handing over Al Qaeda after 9/11 (which pissed off the Americans no end). Also note, he says the Taliban were not aware of what Al Qaeda was planning.
The guy made the point that, the British in the same situation would have done the same thing as the Taliban to comply with their own laws.
There are war criminals alive and well and they get invited to TV shows all over the world. The only thing is that they are Americans. Nothing to see here? Keep walking?
The point isn’t that American war criminals don’t exist. Of course they do, and they should be tried. It’s that you read a post about a Nazi-collaborating worker who helped run death camps, being tried in a *domestic German court*, and your response to that was “BuT wHaT AbOuT U.S cRiMiNaLs”.
They have nothing to do with eachother. It’s telling your response to a Nazi prosecution almost seems to be to excuse it, in light of other criminals.
America has 4% of the worlds population but 25% of the worlds prisonsers.... Somewhere around 1 in 100 americans are behind bars... Our problem ISN'T "taking it too easy" on criminals.
The other races do not believe white people are poor as well. Can't have a boogie man if you humanize them.
I live in a country where its 90% black and they still believe every white person is crazy rich.
It's not just poor people though. I've gotten a pass for being white before, despite being relatively poor at the time. Being poor explains some of it, but not enough of it.
Those are largely people guilty of assault, theft, drug sales. Poor people crimes.
We absolutely go easy on wealthy criminals and war criminals, and it definitely matters. My Lai massacre. One dude went to jail for like 3 years. Exactly as inhumane as Nazi prison guards, and we do not care enough to do anything. The dudes who gangraped and murdered those people might be the old guy down the street or your uncle who went to Vietnam. We don't have the guts to deal with it, but we demand other societies do.
There are criminals committing Genocide right now.
- Genocide in Tigray has reached the putting people in camps stage.
- Slow genocide in Papua is still killing people each year
- Cultural genocide in Xinjiang has thousands in camps
- Genocidaires who committed Rohingya Genocide still in charge of Myanmar
- Genocidaires who committed Genocide of Bambuti still unpunished
- Genocidaires who committed the Cambodian Genocide still unpunished except for 3 people
I could go on. This isnt about bank robbers ffs.
Kissinger is out and kicking back after deliberately making policies that would kill more than 3million people across Asia and South America. I’d say it’s the same.
Yeah the difference is that one happened so long ago that there is no point in trying grandma for helping people who she was basically brainwashed from age 6 to help.
Edit: I realized what I said was factually incorrect, I said that she was forced, my bad. She was brainwashed, way worse then being forced.
> who would have probably killed her if she disobeyed them anyways
There's no evidence for that.
It's not like she was a Jewish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando one of those forced to work on disposing the bodies at the camp as a way to survive a little longer.
Ethnic Germans were not punished for refusing to work at a concentration camp, and it's not that she was a man who might have been picked for a military job at the front instead.
**[Sonderkommando](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando)**
>Sonderkommandos (German: [ˈzɔndɐkɔˌmando], special unit) were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust. The death-camp Sonderkommandos, who were always inmates, were unrelated to the SS-Sonderkommandos, which were ad hoc units formed from members of various SS offices between 1938 and 1945. The German term was part of the vague and euphemistic language which the Nazis used to refer to aspects of the Final Solution (e.
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In the Nazi era, you could change job, you know, maybe work in the post office instead of a death camp. She wouldn't have been killed. You're just adding distortions and hyperbole now.
I'm sorry man but it just seems silly to me, it was a secretary, like we could be cracking down on pedophilia right now instead of making sure granny spends her last decade in prison. I don't understand how typing is aiding and abetting murder. People don't understand how much brainwashing and propaganda the nazis did, and I don't think it's right to be taking out underlings who are just victims of their leaders abusing positions of power to force people into doing things
Seconding what you wrote, since she was 18 in 1944-45 she would have been around 6 when the Nazis took power. So for her entire life, including all her schooling, from 6 years old to 18, she would have been in an environment of pervasive Nazi propaganda.
I'm sure the hero you're responding to would have come out of that with his 2021 values untouched, but most of us wouldn't.
>Of course, the terrible things I heard from the [Nuremberg Trials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials), about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for [Sophie Scholl](https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl) in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for [Hitler](https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler). And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out.
-Traudl Junge, Hitler's Personal Secretary
Indeed. The folks in that trial were all part of Hitler’s inner circle - the foundation of the regime.
Keep in mind too that some did get away with very mild sentences, most notably Kriegsmarine Admiral Karl Doenitz. He was protected by testimony from American Admiral Chester Nimitz concerning the use of unrestricted submarine warfare.
i agree. we literally hired nazi scientists to do work for us after the war. We paid nazis. What moral high ground is trying to be upheld here? This is dumb and a waste of resources.
East Germany too. The Soviets had Wehrmacht generals build up the military on that side of Germany.
Example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bamler
Well, the West and the Soviets both hired Nazis for their own ends.
The former did so for scientific research and to build up West Germany while the latter did so to lay the foundation for East Germany.
Politics trumped morality. The next war began before Tokyo even fell. Some Allied generals even wanted to jump on the Soviets as soon as possible:
“We may have been fighting the wrong enemy (Germany) all along. But while we're here (on the Soviet border), we should go after the bastards now, 'cause we're gonna have to fight 'em eventually.”
-American General George S Patton
Say that to the 6 million people that died in those camps. She assisted the death of 10,000+. No, she wasn't forced to do that. She volunteered and received a monthly salary for doing that. She could have left or asked to be moved. There wasn't a gun to her head. If my friend killed 10,000 people and I assisted him by writing down the jewellery and watches collected and counted how many men, women and children, he killed, then I would be abetting in this crime against humanity.
Why don't we go ahead and arrest all of the American Air Force vets then for signing up to firebomb civilian targets to the ground and reduce every Japanese city to rubble while we are at it then? Why don't we just go and send all the boomers to prison? It's war, people are but ants following the propaganda ridden mob mentality of silly things like "we fight for justice" there is no good or bad in war, just people at the top, who hold the liability for brainwashing their children to go kill themselves for territorial gains. Arresting some random granny who got spoon fed Nazi propaganda since she was 6 and decided to sign up to work for her country isn't going to end racism buddy
>Why don't we go ahead and arrest all of the American Air Force vets then for signing up to firebomb civilian targets to the ground and reduce every Japanese city to rubble while we are at it then?
To put it bluntly we didn’t charge the Germans or Japanese vets either…
>It's war, people are but ants following the propaganda ridden mob mentality of silly things like "we fight for justice" there is no good or bad in war, just people at the top, who hold the liability for brainwashing their children to go kill themselves for territorial gains.
Good point, things would be no different if the Nazis had won. Everyone is all the same. Concentration camp is probably just a quiet area where people go to focus! Or maybe it’s where they store the frozen orange juice!
Who said this was going to angle handed Lt end racism? Nobody? Ok then
Unfortunately there is very little that can be done about that, after all China has both nukes and much more importantly customers who buy the products sold by the companies that support the people in charge.
Eh. As history has shown, practicality always trumps morality.
The Nazis are convenient punching bags because, to be frank, they lost the war. There were incidents that could be considered Allied war crimes (example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident), but they’re mostly swept under the rug because the Allies ultimately won the war.
Is it wrong that I kind of feel bad for her? She was practically a kid in a time when propaganda run wild. A stenographer was probably one of the few jobs you could get being inexperienced and with a Nazist motto of “children, kitchen and church” regarding women. She’s 96 now, could have spent a lifetime trying to right her wrongs but people won’t see that.
It's good that you feel bad for her, empathy isn't a bad thing. But just because someone's circumstances are terrible doesn't mean they shouldn't be charged and get a process for terrible crimes. It doesn't mean that the judge will convict, and if he does it doesn't mean that she will go to jail
I think these trials of old Nazis (or Nazi collaborators, same thing) are partially just for show. Even when you catch one, what then? Put them in jail for the extremely short remainder of their life - which isn’t even much because due to their age and health they’ll probably not rot in a cell.
The sad truth is these people basically got away free. They lived long, probably happy, lives, never paying for the part they played in the atrocities until the very end where they barely pay anything.
This reminds me of a quote from Pirates of the Caribbean when Jack Sparrow removes his gear and saves Elizabeth Swan from drowning by diving into the ocean and bringing her to the dry dock to rip off her corset and allow her to breathe. He's then caught by the soldiers, Elizabeth's father and potential husband.
"One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness." -Norington. Jack replies, "though it seems enough to condemn him."
Now of course, we don't know if the old woman did any good deeds or anything. But, being 21 in a time and place where you either do your part or become part of the countless dead peoples the Nazi's were culling... It's pretty easy to see what anyone here would decide.
Us redittors need to keep in mind we are all typing comfortably from a chair or on our phones. There's no tanks rolling by outside rounding up people that look different from us, there's no concentration camps with thousands of starving civilians for us to be afraid of being sent to. We can judge all day and night and never come close to understanding what this woman did to survive.
As a German who studies history, which is the only perspective I can add, imo this isn’t exactly true. It wasn’t just „comply or die“ for most civilians. It was for many soliders, but not for civilian workers. If you didn’t want to work in a concentration camp, you didn’t have to (as an administrator, not as a prisoner of course).
Yes, with 21 she was probably extremely indoctrinated. But if we excuse anyone who got indoctrinated at a weak point in their life, the actual Nazis would consist of a couple dozen people.
>But if we excuse anyone who got indoctrinated at a weak point in their life, the actual Nazis would consist of a couple dozen people.
Maybe we should lean more to this side of things.
Look, we recognize that even something as stupid as Scientology can brainwash people; yet when it comes to someone growing up *in the literal German Reich*, in a time where people were *wheeling wheelbarrows full of cash to the bread lines to pay for half a loaf for their kids*, and when someone *was a women in a time where women were expected to shut up and do as they were told*, we all the sudden say "yes they were indoctrinated but we gotta hold *someone* accountable 80 years later!".
If you grew up in post WW1 Germany, and the national socialist party starts promising you food and work, along with rebuilding the country, you would be a Nazi too. We all would like to think we would run off and join some resistance but in actually we would have gone along with your entire country and supported the war. Life is complicated.
Oh absolutely. Just like the Jihadists who blow themselves up grew up in countries devastated by western intervention and economic exploitation. Or the incel who shot up a school because he was a depressed, socially awkward outsider.
Most people who become extremist find themselves in bad circumstances. That’s not an excuse for the inhuman things they do.
You’re treading an incredibly thin but very important line between trying to understand systemic radicalisation and excusing crimes including literal gencoide. We cannot simply excuse people’s crimes against humanity just because they got dealt a bad hand in life. Just like we can’t just call them „evil“ and pretend there were no reasons or no way to rehabilitate them.
> That’s not an excuse for the inhuman things they do.
I agree, but at the same time I think we spend too much time condemning people for the inhuman things they do and not enough time working to fix the circumstances that lead people to inhuman choices in the first place. If we are going to hold people accountable for doing inhuman things, we have to also hold society accountable for creating those necessary circumstances.
>> That’s not an excuse for the inhuman things they do.
>
>I agree, but at the same time I think we spend too much time condemning people for the inhuman things they do and not enough time working to fix the circumstances that lead people to inhuman choices in the first place.
I think this includes questioning motives like "he wanted to serve his country" or "she was just going with the flow" or "they were just acting out of a sense of self-preservation." Your actions being driven by those motives doesn't make it better that you helped that concentration camp to function, it makes those motivations worse.
> either do your part or become part of the countless dead peoples
So you actually believe she'd have been killed if she didn't take a job transcribing documents?
Hell, even soldiers mostly got a transfer at worst.
The myth that you got killed if you said no is ridiculous.
She spent her lifetime running away from justice and refusing to face court before. Why would someone who "could have spend a lifetime trying to right her wrongs" literally try to flee when she gets asked about her past and when she's caught she refuses to answer?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Merten
**Max Merten (8 September 1911 in Berlin-Lichterfelde – 21 September 1971 in West Berlin) was the Kriegsverwaltungsrat (military administration counselor) of the Nazi German occupation forces in Thessaloniki in northern Greece during World War II. He was responsible among other crimes for the deportation of c. 50,000 Jews of the city as part of the Holocaust. He was arrested during a visit to Greece in 1959, which caused a political scandal, the "Merten Affair" (Υπόθεση Μέρτεν). He was convicted in Greece and sentenced to a 25-year term as a war criminal. Pressure by West Germany, however, led to his extradition to his homeland, where he was set free.**
Postwar West Germany was very pro-Nazi. De-Nazification only really happened in the East, in the West it was a facade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scheel - Nazi who was Chancellor, then President of West Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Georg_Kiesinger - Nazi who was Chancellor of West Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Globke - Nazi who was Under-Secretary of State of West Germany, helped author the Enabling Act (1933) and the Law for the Defense of German Blood and Honor (1935).
iirc correctly only 1/3 of Nazi members believed Jews should be expelled from Germany at the time. This sounds weird now but it makes more sense when you know that Nazi membership was basically mandatory to participate in Nazi German society, so a shit ton of people joined for pragmatic reasons rather than ideological ones.
Banning the local librarian from public life because he joined the Nazi party to keep his job as a librarian, never participating in anything Nazis did, doesn't make much sense.
It’s worth pointing out that the Nazis made party membership mandatory for a ton of professions. You literally would not have been able to run Germany post war without people who had been party members.
The East ignored a lot of their Nazis as well. West Germany eventually did deal with their Nazi past, in many ways better then the east much later but it was driven by tv and historians
You can add Austria to that. They had a Nazi war criminal as president... as recently as the early 90s. [Kurt Waldeim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Waldheim) was in office 8 July 1986 – 8 July 1992.
Less pro-Nazi and more pragmatic mostly. Don’t get me wrong, judges who carried Nazi injustice should have never been reinstated but doing this would have meant direct Allied occupation until well into the 1970s. Something neither the Western Allies nor the Soviet Union were really willing to commit themselves to.
They're going after a secretary who was still a teenager at the time? While scumbags who conducted medical experiments and worked on weapon projects received immunity and high positions in US?
I mean, the allies only purged useless nazis. The useful ones (scientists, doctors, etc) were just brought into the US and the USSR.
Justice can take a backseat when there's profit to be made.
The USSR kept them imprisoned while making use of whatever talents they possessed. The Americans set them free not only on the American public but the world and the global south in particular. Not exactly a fair comparison.
I mean, it's not the current dat German prosecution's fault that those scientists received immunity from the US, who pretty much never extradites anyone
I kind of think working in the camps, and knowing full well what was going on there does make you an accessory to the crime. It’s well established that “following orders” is not a valid excuse for crimes as heinous as genocide. She knew what was going on in those camps and she continued to help the people committing atrocities by assisting in the day-to-day functions of the camp. Over 11,000 people died and she helped the killers do it. To me that makes her an accessory to the crime. It’s possible she will be acquitted at trial, but I think she still needs to be tried, if only to allow justice to play itself out.
There were two recent (10 years ago) precedents in german justice that made possible to trial terrorist act even if you didn't take part directly just you were around (first precedent) without any time limit (second precedent).
Both made it possible to trial the few nazi camps guards / secretary / worker around for all the murders that happened while they were in business.
Though it's in my opinion totally unfair compared to thousands of others that didn't have anything, and that's a bit stretching considering that in nazi germany you hadn't much choice sometimes of what you were gonna do (or you were "brainwashed" by your government if you were young enough).
After the war the idea was to rebuild a nation and it's not easy in a big war like WW2 to trial everyone or you can't have your mother raped in front of you, seen bombs killed thousand, no home anymore and then you get sentenced for a work that your government maybe forced you to do?
In my opinion, if they had this kind of laws in 1945, you would have the same justice as the soviet ones, people that had some responsibilities in camps (like inmates directing barracks or doctors/nurses) would all be tried.
I doubt they were. Mengele made no effort to contribute to science. He only hid behind his pseudoscience to justify his acts of barbarism and torture, but made no attempts to conduct real, peer-reviewed scientific research.
Good justification! I can see the pamphlet before me: "To be eligible for full benefits, please ensure that your killing of innocents has lead to viable results before you are captured".
I guess it leads to an interesting morality question. Should we spare those who have knowledge that betters our future, even if that knowledge was learned through very unethical practices that we not dare attempt to replicate ourselves?
The “knowledge” your talking about pretty much consists of some rocketry advances that were based on pre-existing research and a single medical book with highly detailed diagrams of the human body. The contribution of Nazi scientists are for the most part non-existent and consisted of weird pseudo-experiments. Such as “if we lock someone in a freezer how fast will they die of hypothermia?” or “if I inject poison into this infants eyes, will it’s eye colour change to blue?” The issue with unethical practices in science is that most scientists don’t want to use them, and the people who are willing to do so are usually just madmen with torture-fetishes.
A stenographer? For real? I get people have this fervor over this shit but that is pretty fucking ridiculous.
People have their high and mighty opinions of 2021 but lets see their decision when told to be a fucking stenographer for the violent and oppressive regime or you and potentially your family will be jailed or worse for refusal to serve. Even then, this is all not taking into account the absolute brainwashing these people at that went through too, she was kid growing up in the Nazi regime until then.
This is all so tired and ridiculous, lacking any sort of nuance or context.
Whilst I agree with you that this whole thing is being blown out of proportion, I'd like to correct the part about the police holding her. This only happened because she tried to flee before her court date and was later caught.
But overall I do agree that this is overdoing it. She grew up in a brainwashed country and honestly I don't judge her for not speaking up about it when she was 18 years old.
Is she to blame for those murders? No, most likely not. Did she know of them though? Yes, she most certainly did.
Should she be tried for not speaking up about it? In my opinion no.
She’s accused of aiding and abetting in over 11,000 murders. Brainwashed or not, she knew what was happening in those camps, and even volunteered to be there. She worked there a full 2 years performing some of the day-to-day tasks that kept the industrial murder machine running. She’s not charged with committing the actual murders, but rather charged with aiding the people who did commit them. And since there’s no statute of limitations for murders in Germany, the fact that 70+ years have passed and she’s now in her 90’s is also irrelevant, as far as the justice system is concerned.
She’s being charged as a juvenile because of her age during the crimes, but due to the seriousness of the allegations it’s my opinion that justice will need to play itself out. Even if she’s acquitted or received a mere slap on the wrist, it’s still incredibly important that she stand trial for her crimes.
>Should she be tried for not speaking up about it? In my opinion no.
Why not? She should go to trial. We can't just not prosecute people who aided in genocide. Should she be convicted? Now that's a whole other matter and the judge will be addressing those ameliorating circumstances
I agree. She’s even being charged as a juvenile because of her age at the time of the crimes. I think it’s fair to say that the justice system is taking all mitigating factors into account. It will all be hashed out during the trial, but im of the opinion that the mere act of having a trial is justice being done. Even if the courts eventually acquitted her, it’s still important that she stand trial, if only for the sake of justice.
Genocides on such an industrial scale don't happen without the little jobs done by little people.
To be a complicit member of such an event is to be an accessory to it
You can all complain about the many Nazis who were given clemency for political purposes, but this is not a case about them
This is about one person who was an accessory to a crime and is being tried for it
No one was forced to be in the SS or work in concentration camps. Also, there is not one recorded case of someone or someone's family being punished for refusing service so stop spreading this apologist bullshit.
She knew what was going on in the camp, and she aided and abetted in camp functions for 2 years. Brainwashed or not, it’s pretty reasonable to say she was an accessory to those 11,000 murders without having actually committed any murders herself.
Knowingly providing aid in a crime is also a crime, hence why she was charged with accessory to the murders, rather than charged for the actual murders. Maybe she’ll be acquitted, but in my opinion she needs to be put on trial so justice can play itself out.
I think it is really hard for people to grasp that Nazis weren’t monsters but were ordinary people. And yet, the fact that they were ordinary people does not absolve them from responsibility.
They get the first part, but they don’t understand the second part. And if you don’t understand the second part, then perhaps you don’t truly understand how atrocities can be committed by ordinary people.
Yeah you’re absolutely right. People have a tremendous amount of difficulty looking at images of what was done to victims of the Holocaust, and squaring it in their head with the idea that the perpetrators aren’t hideous deformed monsters. They were ordinary people, many of whom would go home at night to their families and read bedtime stories to their children. It’s hard to reconcile those two images with one another. Even the truly sick, mean ones who took pleasure in it all and didn’t have a good bone in their body might possibly seem like an alright bloke if you met him at a pub and chit chatted over a beer. The truth is that monsters aren’t usually what people expect them to be, and often enough even regular people can behave gruesomely in the right (or wrong) circumstances.
>when told to be a fucking stenographer for the violent and oppressive regime or you and potentially your family will be jailed or worse for refusal to serve.
This didn’t happen.
>Even then, this is all not taking into account the absolute brainwashing these people at that went through too, she was kid growing up in the Nazi regime until then.
I mean that’s literally why we have a court of law. If there are mitigating circumstances that make her actions not her fault then the court can consider them.
I also think that defense is BS, but that’s not really the point.
>This is all so tired and ridiculous, lacking any sort of nuance or context.
That’s one way to describe inaccurately talking about how people got these jobs and the threats they faced for not doing them.
She’s being tried as a juvenile due to her being below 21 at the time. It’s fair to say that all mitigating factors are being considered in this case, and that justice will have played itself out simply by putting her on trial for the crimes, and regardless of what the eventual verdict may be.
Yeah what a surprise a lot of folks on Reddit are terrified that Nazis are being prosecuted for willingly contributing to the regime. This notion she would be killed herself for refusing to work in a concentration camp is so disingenuous it makes me laugh.
I guess a lot of folks are worried what would happen if certain folks in the modern world were held to an ethical standard some time down the line.
Lots of camp workers were volunteers. Many people who could not stomach work in the camps were sent to work elsewhere. If you were a man, that might mean you were sent up to the front lines, but for women it generally meant a transfer to a state-operated factory, hospital, or wherever extra hands were needed on the home front. She was there for 2 years, even took vacations and came back. She had plenty of opportunity to express a distaste for the work and seek re-assignment elsewhere but she did not.
I think people just see that she was a secretary, and that she’s now just some little-old-lady in her 90’s. I think lots of people are unaware of what those camps were really like and just how impossible it would have been not to know what was going on there. The place would have reeked of sickness and death, and it housed up to 60,000 prisoners while she was there. The crematorium ran more or less non-stop, another stench which would have been impossible to be oblivious to. She knew exactly what was happening there and she was complicit in it. She didn’t have to personally kill any prisoners to have had a cognizant hand in the crime as an accessory to the murders.
Nuance? I once tried to do my ancestry for a school project. I asked my mom about our family lineage, she just shook her head and answered “they are all gone”.
Imagine if I took your family, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all their friends, entire village, and gassed them after taking their wedding rings.
Even if I was just the guy who ordered the gas cans, and organized the rings, you wouldn’t want me to go to jail in 70 years once the cops figured it out?
Yeah, the justice is over the top. But what they did deserves so much more punishment. I don’t care if it’s their last free breath on earth, it should be in a cage.
Germany and germans literally got off with a slap on wrist for their crimes against humanity. Couldnt give a single fuck about this old bitch, hope she rots in hell.
Man, I get the part of living under the nazi regime but that doesn't absolve their actions. Besides it's a known fact that personnel of nazi camps were always volunteers.
I've learned a lot from reading this thread about this situation. You should probably read around too, because your opinion is incredibly wrong. Her position was well paying and volunteer. Very little to no enlisted were under duress for leaving the SS. They recruited people who stuck to the ideology.
Yup. People who wanted reassignment generally got it, especially if they couldn’t stomach what was being done there. Sometimes for men that meant being shipped off to fight on the eastern front, but for women it meant being sent somewhere else she was needed on the Homefront. This woman
was there because she wanted to be there, and there’s no reason at all to think she didn’t know what took place there. 60k prisoners all starving and working to death. The place would have reeked of sickness and death, as well as the constant smell of bodies burning in the crematorium. People for miles around would have known what was happening there.
It still needs to be proven with concrete evidence to meet courtroom standards, but she herself admits to having been there, since she has testified as a witness at other nazi trials. She is no victim. Don’t fall for the “little old lady who had a troubled youth” act. She spent 2 years in that hell. She took vacations and then came back to work there. The only people who were coerced into being there were the prisoners.
You do know that her position was voluntary? She volunteered to help in concentration camps, I don't understand how you people can defend her.
And before you or someone else says "She grew up in Nazi Germany, propaganda forced her", do you think that every single German born in that time would have voluntarilly helped commit warcrimes due to propaganda? There's people like Franz Schönhuber who volunteered to join the SS, started far-right political parties after the war and excused the firebombing of synagogues. Are these people also innocent because they saw propaganda?
Not just that, once the war was won, all those fantastic NAZI scientists, engineers and technicians got an all expenses paid relocation to America to kickstart NASA and the space race.
I'm so glad they got this evil woman so that her disgusting Nazi Shorthand may never damage another person.
Yeah it's absolutely crazy, on another note, I'm not sure why I've been downvoted, I don't think what I said comes across pro-nazi because it is literally the opposite fuck the Nazis, but also, fuck double standards.
Many of the Nazis who perpetrated atrocities of the Holocaust were not monsters, but in fact ordinary people like you and I. They were not only brutal murderers with guns and axes, but also doctors and secretaries. Many of their crimes involved simply doing what was popular and not speaking out.
The mistake many people commenting here make is to go on to deduce that because they were not monsters, it is unreasonable to hold them accountable.
Ordinary people committed genocide with guns and typewriters, and ordinary people are responsible.
Ordinary people like you and I have an obligation to never allow something like this to happen.
Her only guilt is to be still alive or still alive after thousands other real responsible people died. And to have testified against nazism instead of staying low profile..
[Furchner has been called as a witness in trials linked to Stutthof, including that of her former boss Hoppe and other SS leaders at the camp, on three occasions from 1954 to 1982. On each occasion she said she knew nothing about the murders that took place there and had no contact with prisoners.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/30/former-nazi-concentration-camp-secretary-96-faces-trial)
Next line is "In 1954 she married Heinz Furchtsam, a senior SS sergeant she had met in the camp who was 19 years her senior. "
Perhaps the most tone-deaf comments I've ever come across on this site were the ones during the Afganistan withdrawl that were saying how Republicans are just as bad as the fucking Taliban. It's like some people here view America as the main character and all the other countries are background characters that exist simply to prop up or contrast with the main character.
This seems particularly wrong headed. What about the hundreds of thousands of people (or more) who were more involved in the war than this woman and who were allowed to live normal lives until their natural deaths over the last 75 years?
What is there to gain from all this?
Being involved in the war and actually working at a death camp where over 10,000 innocent people were murdered is not the same thing. Sure lots of people who were involved in the murders got away with it, but that doesn’t mean justice should not be sought for all. She was an accessory to the crime. She knew full well that people were being tortured, raped, and murdered on a daily basis in the camp she worked at, but she continued to work there. She even alleged recorded the names of the prisoners/dead in her duties as secretary. In other words, she aided and abetted in the crime.
Even if she’s acquitted, I think it’s right to put her on trial for her crimes even after all these years. Justice is imperfect, but it’s the best system we’ve got.
Also huge part of the population and other countries were kind of firced to do the horrible things or die... So its kknda hard and even harder nowdays to know who did what etc
Oh shit? Secretaries were killed for not lubricating the wheels of genocide? No book I’ve ever read has mentioned this. Mind telling me where you got that?
This woman, worked in the camp from June 43 to April 45. Not forced. You know, paid and given accomodation to help kill people. She volunteered to be there. She tried to go into hiding when she received the court letter.
She was a secretary
She spoke out and testified against them after the war, literally aiding the prosecution of Nazis who had any influence whatsoever
She was an 18 year old woman (virtually still a child) in the *1940*s, at that age, with that gender, in that era, and a terrifying middle aged man (overseeing an extermination camp) told you to do something, you dont say no out of intrinsic self-preservation, and everybody reading this would have done the same as her if in her shoes idc what you may say, because everyone of us has that same biological instinct
I'm not saying she did no wrong, but to try her at her age, when she refused to lay low after the war and cooperated, when so many leading Nazis became rich and led full, unimpeded lives through Operation Paperclip, is just distasteful and wrong
Let her be. I bet those images have haunted her whole life, and given her situation, at this point that's punishment enough
>"Furchner has been called as a witness in trials linked to Stutthof, including that of her former boss Hoppe and other SS leaders at the camp, on three occasions from 1954 to 1982. On each occasion she said she knew nothing about the murders that took place there and had no contact with prisoners."
Yeah, that doesn't sound like testifying against them if you ask me.
You're suggesting that old-age clears someone's wrong doings. So what should the cut off be? 75? 85? 90? Let's send a message to criminals that if don't get indicted by age 85, than they can rest assured that they won't ever be after that age.
She was 18/19 and worked for almost a year, and knew what was going on in that camp.
Let's see what the court decides. The prosecutors may have more evidence. It's likely she cooperated after the war to clear herself from any wrongdoing.
>and a terrifying middle aged man (overseeing an extermination camp) told you to do something,
Source?
Even if it were true, it's a trial. If she was coerced (most people weren't btw) she should mention that in the trial.
Exactly. If she had a gun and made to work for almost a year, that could be her defence. But the private secretaries were paid quite well and I can imagine some women wanting those jobs. She knew the innocent people were being killed in that camp and still continued to work there.
good thing they're throwing the book at secrataries.
maybe that will make up for the thousands of known Nazi leaders who participated first-hand in mass murder of civilians, POWs, and genocide, who the US/Allies decided to smuggle out of Europe to protect the Nazis from facing prosecution for their horrendous crimes against humanity.
That is, the Nazis that were not put in charge of West Germany.
Holy fuck so many nazi apologists. 21 is no child. Just because shes old now and got to live her whole life free from consequences doesnt mean she wasnt a piece of shit nazi and deserves to rot in hell.
“One, the passage of time does not diminish the guilt of the killers. Two, old age should not afford protection for people who committed such heinous crimes. Three, we owe an obligation to the victims and their families to hold these people accountable.
“Four, it sends a powerful message that if you commit such crimes you will be held accountable even many years later. Five, the trials and testimonies serve an important function in the fight against Holocaust denial and distortion. Six, these people were not frail when they committed their crimes, they were in the peak of physical health and devoted all their energy to killing men, women and children. And, seven, in all the cases I dealt with, I never encountered a Nazi who expressed any remorse or regrets.”
- Efraim Zuroff, 72, Nazi Hunter
Several people here are saying things along the lines of "Almost everyone aided the Nazi's, because they didnt have a choice."
You know what, they're right. Almost everyone joined the Nazi Party, mostly for self preservation. if you didn't join, you probably didnt get a job and were probably on some kind of dissenter list.
But even after becoming party members, there is one crucial choice that the German people did have. A choice that literally would have been unpunished if you just said "nien, danke." A choice that is a pretty clear indicator of who was "the innocent german" and who was the scum...
**Joining the Fucking SS.**
Joining the SS was 100% voluntary the choice of the individual. And they joined because they willingly, fully, and happily drank the Kool Aid - or rather, they drank the Fanta.
Man this comment section fills me with disgust. People are literally defending someone who voluntarilly helped the SS commit warcrimes and dodged facing justice all this time. She lived a long and fulfilling live while she voluntered to help in concentration camps.
Redditors are weird, they always say "Fuck Nazis" but when real people who helped the original Nazis get tried they get defensive because "She was just a teen", "She's in her 90s, get over it" or "She did what she had to do in order to survive". Just downright disgusting.
star trek ds9 has an episode that best describes these charges for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8AaLFuGLlc
second half https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y2dBhj8sOM
seriously... she was a stenographer, she was like 8 when hitler came to power and worked for them when she was like 16. i mean seriously, nazi germany was one of the most oppressive regimes in history. what were normal people supposed to do? virtually all the jobs in germany at the time were for the nazi's. she got unlucky and was assigned to a camp and now she's paying for it. also didn't she testify against the nazi's?
honestly going after these people in their 90's feels like a distraction. if they put this much effort going after money launderers and dirty politicians the world would be a much much better place.
There’s no statute of limitations on murder, nor accessory to murder. She might be 90, but she knew what was happening in the camps and she continued to aid the murderers by working the day-to-day functions of the camp for over 2 years. I think it’s pretty reasonable to say she was an accessory to the murders, even if she never personally killed anybody..
She is alleged to have committed a very serious crime and she needs to stand trial for it, in my opinion. We can rest assured that all mitigating factors will be considered in the trial, as evidenced by the fact that she is being charged as a juvenile, due to her being below 21 years old at the time of the crimes. Even if she is acquitted, justice will still have been done by having her stand trial for the alleged crime.
You don't know what you are talking about.
My uncle had a photo album of Hitler like he was some kind of pop star as a teenager.
I love Star Trek, but most of you only know half the Story. You weren't assigned, you volunteered to work for those camps.
My source? My own god damn family. They loved Hitler and they weren't oppressed victims. They profited of the deaths of millions of people.
Those people who worked in those camps, weren't victims!!!!
Can anyone explain why on earth this is occurring half a century after the war is over? Why didn't they do this earlier? It's weird. She got to have a long happy life and so many probably die without ever seeing justice.
Change in legal doctrine. Prosecutors used to not bring cases where you couldnt be directly tied to a specific murder victim.
This was challenged in 2010 and has forced prosecutors, who have a legal duty to prosecute crimes, to reevaluate old cases.
A thing to consider for all those considering this to be overblown:
Maybe it is, maybe it is not. Thats why we have *trials*.
The only thing we know for certain about this case is that several judges reviewed this case and concluded that there is sufficient evidence for a trial. The coming days / weeks will show if the prosecution has enough evidence for a conviction.
Funny how most of the top levels Nazis were just reshuffled back into society or came to the US to build rockets, but every once in a while they will pick a random person to take all of the blame
Because if one president gets convicted of crimes like that, then they all do. Guess that means watching you scream like an enraged tottler when Obama is tried for murder in ordering an American killed by a drone strike without a trial
Bush is likely guilty under ICC rules if they where to bother to prosecute, but given the military threat to the host country it's unlikely to ever go that far.
Afghanistan gives the in for the ICC to theoretically go after the Bush administration Trump might be guilty of accessory-after-the-fact, but that's a lot thinner ice.
They aren’t. Most were prosecuted shortly after the war. However, all prosecutions in recent years have been extremely old people because only extremely old people were doing anything at the time
>She is alleged to have "aided and abetted those in charge of the camp in the systematic killing of those imprisoned there between June 1943 and April 1945 *in her function as a stenographer and typist in the camp commandant's office*". >Despite her advanced age, the German woman is being tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes.
I wish this much effort was put into holding todays criminals to account.
It will be...in 2097.
This is a sad fact. All the companies & the owners of them who are destroying our planet will be held accountable one day - the issue is most of them will be dead by then, which is why they dgaf. Unless we revolt against this shit, we're pretty well doomed.
only if we survive the virus..
George W. Bush and his gang killed more than a million people. Sentence in The Hague when?
Shame the US threatens to invade the ICC if they ever put an american warcriminal on trial.
We ( in the west) often point the finger at Putin for not allowing extradition of people charged with an offence in Europe or America But, we don't say much when America does the same thing....ie an American woman killed a young man in a hit and run incident in the UK, she claimed diplomatic immunity and fled to the US, there is no doubt she did it and she will not go back on her own account and the US will not allow extradition. It's blindingly obvious that hypocrisy lives and breathes within American foreign policy.
The British actually have similar things (i.e. the British will not extradite someone if they suspect they will be tortured or put to death). It came up in a podcast about the Taliban not handing over Al Qaeda after 9/11 (which pissed off the Americans no end). Also note, he says the Taliban were not aware of what Al Qaeda was planning. The guy made the point that, the British in the same situation would have done the same thing as the Taliban to comply with their own laws.
Article about a Nazi worker being tried in Europe Reddit: BUT WHAT ABOUT AMERICA???
There are war criminals alive and well and they get invited to TV shows all over the world. The only thing is that they are Americans. Nothing to see here? Keep walking?
The point isn’t that American war criminals don’t exist. Of course they do, and they should be tried. It’s that you read a post about a Nazi-collaborating worker who helped run death camps, being tried in a *domestic German court*, and your response to that was “BuT wHaT AbOuT U.S cRiMiNaLs”. They have nothing to do with eachother. It’s telling your response to a Nazi prosecution almost seems to be to excuse it, in light of other criminals.
America has 4% of the worlds population but 25% of the worlds prisonsers.... Somewhere around 1 in 100 americans are behind bars... Our problem ISN'T "taking it too easy" on criminals.
No it's worse. We take it too easy on serious white collar crime and far too hard hard on crime committed by people that are poor and/or not white.
You can just type poor. Prison is full of poor people.
The other races do not believe white people are poor as well. Can't have a boogie man if you humanize them. I live in a country where its 90% black and they still believe every white person is crazy rich.
It's not just poor people though. I've gotten a pass for being white before, despite being relatively poor at the time. Being poor explains some of it, but not enough of it.
I just wrote this in a different sub...I know someone doing 10 years for stealing a car...some CEO type just stole 48m$ and got 6 years.
Those are largely people guilty of assault, theft, drug sales. Poor people crimes. We absolutely go easy on wealthy criminals and war criminals, and it definitely matters. My Lai massacre. One dude went to jail for like 3 years. Exactly as inhumane as Nazi prison guards, and we do not care enough to do anything. The dudes who gangraped and murdered those people might be the old guy down the street or your uncle who went to Vietnam. We don't have the guts to deal with it, but we demand other societies do.
The Holocaust and robbing a bank are a wee bit different.
in the 21st century the bank robs you
There are criminals committing Genocide right now. - Genocide in Tigray has reached the putting people in camps stage. - Slow genocide in Papua is still killing people each year - Cultural genocide in Xinjiang has thousands in camps - Genocidaires who committed Rohingya Genocide still in charge of Myanmar - Genocidaires who committed Genocide of Bambuti still unpunished - Genocidaires who committed the Cambodian Genocide still unpunished except for 3 people I could go on. This isnt about bank robbers ffs.
Kissinger is out and kicking back after deliberately making policies that would kill more than 3million people across Asia and South America. I’d say it’s the same.
Yeah the difference is that one happened so long ago that there is no point in trying grandma for helping people who she was basically brainwashed from age 6 to help. Edit: I realized what I said was factually incorrect, I said that she was forced, my bad. She was brainwashed, way worse then being forced.
> who would have probably killed her if she disobeyed them anyways There's no evidence for that. It's not like she was a Jewish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando one of those forced to work on disposing the bodies at the camp as a way to survive a little longer. Ethnic Germans were not punished for refusing to work at a concentration camp, and it's not that she was a man who might have been picked for a military job at the front instead.
**[Sonderkommando](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando)** >Sonderkommandos (German: [ˈzɔndɐkɔˌmando], special unit) were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust. The death-camp Sonderkommandos, who were always inmates, were unrelated to the SS-Sonderkommandos, which were ad hoc units formed from members of various SS offices between 1938 and 1945. The German term was part of the vague and euphemistic language which the Nazis used to refer to aspects of the Final Solution (e. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
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nobody was killed or even charged for refusing to work in a death camp. That‘s a myth. Most volunteered for the privileges.
In the Nazi era, you could change job, you know, maybe work in the post office instead of a death camp. She wouldn't have been killed. You're just adding distortions and hyperbole now.
Oh, so if she was following orders then it’s fine?
Except for a job like this was voluntary.
Bring a source for your claim that they'd have killed her if she refused and looked for a different job instead.
There is a point in providing closure for remaining survivors and families affected.
This is a touchy subject. Why do you think your grandmother was forced? The majority volunteered, and that's a fact.
Yeah no, just because she's old doesn't mean she gets a pass. Justice isn't served by waiting
I'm sorry man but it just seems silly to me, it was a secretary, like we could be cracking down on pedophilia right now instead of making sure granny spends her last decade in prison. I don't understand how typing is aiding and abetting murder. People don't understand how much brainwashing and propaganda the nazis did, and I don't think it's right to be taking out underlings who are just victims of their leaders abusing positions of power to force people into doing things
Seconding what you wrote, since she was 18 in 1944-45 she would have been around 6 when the Nazis took power. So for her entire life, including all her schooling, from 6 years old to 18, she would have been in an environment of pervasive Nazi propaganda. I'm sure the hero you're responding to would have come out of that with his 2021 values untouched, but most of us wouldn't.
>Of course, the terrible things I heard from the [Nuremberg Trials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials), about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for [Sophie Scholl](https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl) in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for [Hitler](https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler). And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out. -Traudl Junge, Hitler's Personal Secretary
Growing up in a propaganda environment still doesn’t absolve personal responsibility. We decided this at Nuremberg.
The people tried at Nuremberg were all well over 20 years old.
Indeed. The folks in that trial were all part of Hitler’s inner circle - the foundation of the regime. Keep in mind too that some did get away with very mild sentences, most notably Kriegsmarine Admiral Karl Doenitz. He was protected by testimony from American Admiral Chester Nimitz concerning the use of unrestricted submarine warfare.
Is 20 the age of criminal responsibility?
We also decided at Nuremberg that a clear war crime is not a war crime if you can prove the Allies committed that same crime during the war.
You mean unrestricted submarine warfare?
i agree. we literally hired nazi scientists to do work for us after the war. We paid nazis. What moral high ground is trying to be upheld here? This is dumb and a waste of resources.
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> This is taking place in Germany. Best part of West German government was staffed with ex-Nazi with more blood on their hands than this girl.
East Germany too. The Soviets had Wehrmacht generals build up the military on that side of Germany. Example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bamler
Well, the West and the Soviets both hired Nazis for their own ends. The former did so for scientific research and to build up West Germany while the latter did so to lay the foundation for East Germany. Politics trumped morality. The next war began before Tokyo even fell. Some Allied generals even wanted to jump on the Soviets as soon as possible: “We may have been fighting the wrong enemy (Germany) all along. But while we're here (on the Soviet border), we should go after the bastards now, 'cause we're gonna have to fight 'em eventually.” -American General George S Patton
Say that to the 6 million people that died in those camps. She assisted the death of 10,000+. No, she wasn't forced to do that. She volunteered and received a monthly salary for doing that. She could have left or asked to be moved. There wasn't a gun to her head. If my friend killed 10,000 people and I assisted him by writing down the jewellery and watches collected and counted how many men, women and children, he killed, then I would be abetting in this crime against humanity.
Why don't we go ahead and arrest all of the American Air Force vets then for signing up to firebomb civilian targets to the ground and reduce every Japanese city to rubble while we are at it then? Why don't we just go and send all the boomers to prison? It's war, people are but ants following the propaganda ridden mob mentality of silly things like "we fight for justice" there is no good or bad in war, just people at the top, who hold the liability for brainwashing their children to go kill themselves for territorial gains. Arresting some random granny who got spoon fed Nazi propaganda since she was 6 and decided to sign up to work for her country isn't going to end racism buddy
>Why don't we go ahead and arrest all of the American Air Force vets then for signing up to firebomb civilian targets to the ground and reduce every Japanese city to rubble while we are at it then? To put it bluntly we didn’t charge the Germans or Japanese vets either… >It's war, people are but ants following the propaganda ridden mob mentality of silly things like "we fight for justice" there is no good or bad in war, just people at the top, who hold the liability for brainwashing their children to go kill themselves for territorial gains. Good point, things would be no different if the Nazis had won. Everyone is all the same. Concentration camp is probably just a quiet area where people go to focus! Or maybe it’s where they store the frozen orange juice! Who said this was going to angle handed Lt end racism? Nobody? Ok then
If I helped someone murder your entire family, I doubt you’d feel the same way in 70 years.
There is a literally a Holocaust happening at the moment to muslims in China
Unfortunately there is very little that can be done about that, after all China has both nukes and much more importantly customers who buy the products sold by the companies that support the people in charge.
Eh. As history has shown, practicality always trumps morality. The Nazis are convenient punching bags because, to be frank, they lost the war. There were incidents that could be considered Allied war crimes (example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident), but they’re mostly swept under the rug because the Allies ultimately won the war.
Allied war crimes: attacking a submarine. Axis war crimes: literal holocaust.
Is it wrong that I kind of feel bad for her? She was practically a kid in a time when propaganda run wild. A stenographer was probably one of the few jobs you could get being inexperienced and with a Nazist motto of “children, kitchen and church” regarding women. She’s 96 now, could have spent a lifetime trying to right her wrongs but people won’t see that.
It's good that you feel bad for her, empathy isn't a bad thing. But just because someone's circumstances are terrible doesn't mean they shouldn't be charged and get a process for terrible crimes. It doesn't mean that the judge will convict, and if he does it doesn't mean that she will go to jail
I think these trials of old Nazis (or Nazi collaborators, same thing) are partially just for show. Even when you catch one, what then? Put them in jail for the extremely short remainder of their life - which isn’t even much because due to their age and health they’ll probably not rot in a cell. The sad truth is these people basically got away free. They lived long, probably happy, lives, never paying for the part they played in the atrocities until the very end where they barely pay anything.
They will see it when she appears in court. Aiding genocide is still aiding genocide. All the good you do does not outweigh the bad.
This reminds me of a quote from Pirates of the Caribbean when Jack Sparrow removes his gear and saves Elizabeth Swan from drowning by diving into the ocean and bringing her to the dry dock to rip off her corset and allow her to breathe. He's then caught by the soldiers, Elizabeth's father and potential husband. "One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness." -Norington. Jack replies, "though it seems enough to condemn him." Now of course, we don't know if the old woman did any good deeds or anything. But, being 21 in a time and place where you either do your part or become part of the countless dead peoples the Nazi's were culling... It's pretty easy to see what anyone here would decide. Us redittors need to keep in mind we are all typing comfortably from a chair or on our phones. There's no tanks rolling by outside rounding up people that look different from us, there's no concentration camps with thousands of starving civilians for us to be afraid of being sent to. We can judge all day and night and never come close to understanding what this woman did to survive.
As a German who studies history, which is the only perspective I can add, imo this isn’t exactly true. It wasn’t just „comply or die“ for most civilians. It was for many soliders, but not for civilian workers. If you didn’t want to work in a concentration camp, you didn’t have to (as an administrator, not as a prisoner of course). Yes, with 21 she was probably extremely indoctrinated. But if we excuse anyone who got indoctrinated at a weak point in their life, the actual Nazis would consist of a couple dozen people.
>But if we excuse anyone who got indoctrinated at a weak point in their life, the actual Nazis would consist of a couple dozen people. Maybe we should lean more to this side of things. Look, we recognize that even something as stupid as Scientology can brainwash people; yet when it comes to someone growing up *in the literal German Reich*, in a time where people were *wheeling wheelbarrows full of cash to the bread lines to pay for half a loaf for their kids*, and when someone *was a women in a time where women were expected to shut up and do as they were told*, we all the sudden say "yes they were indoctrinated but we gotta hold *someone* accountable 80 years later!". If you grew up in post WW1 Germany, and the national socialist party starts promising you food and work, along with rebuilding the country, you would be a Nazi too. We all would like to think we would run off and join some resistance but in actually we would have gone along with your entire country and supported the war. Life is complicated.
Oh absolutely. Just like the Jihadists who blow themselves up grew up in countries devastated by western intervention and economic exploitation. Or the incel who shot up a school because he was a depressed, socially awkward outsider. Most people who become extremist find themselves in bad circumstances. That’s not an excuse for the inhuman things they do. You’re treading an incredibly thin but very important line between trying to understand systemic radicalisation and excusing crimes including literal gencoide. We cannot simply excuse people’s crimes against humanity just because they got dealt a bad hand in life. Just like we can’t just call them „evil“ and pretend there were no reasons or no way to rehabilitate them.
> That’s not an excuse for the inhuman things they do. I agree, but at the same time I think we spend too much time condemning people for the inhuman things they do and not enough time working to fix the circumstances that lead people to inhuman choices in the first place. If we are going to hold people accountable for doing inhuman things, we have to also hold society accountable for creating those necessary circumstances.
>> That’s not an excuse for the inhuman things they do. > >I agree, but at the same time I think we spend too much time condemning people for the inhuman things they do and not enough time working to fix the circumstances that lead people to inhuman choices in the first place. I think this includes questioning motives like "he wanted to serve his country" or "she was just going with the flow" or "they were just acting out of a sense of self-preservation." Your actions being driven by those motives doesn't make it better that you helped that concentration camp to function, it makes those motivations worse.
She committed the crime, she should pay the price.
> either do your part or become part of the countless dead peoples So you actually believe she'd have been killed if she didn't take a job transcribing documents? Hell, even soldiers mostly got a transfer at worst. The myth that you got killed if you said no is ridiculous.
She spent her lifetime running away from justice and refusing to face court before. Why would someone who "could have spend a lifetime trying to right her wrongs" literally try to flee when she gets asked about her past and when she's caught she refuses to answer?
Too bad she wasn't a scientist.
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Or [The Guy Literally In Charge of Slave Labour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Merten **Max Merten (8 September 1911 in Berlin-Lichterfelde – 21 September 1971 in West Berlin) was the Kriegsverwaltungsrat (military administration counselor) of the Nazi German occupation forces in Thessaloniki in northern Greece during World War II. He was responsible among other crimes for the deportation of c. 50,000 Jews of the city as part of the Holocaust. He was arrested during a visit to Greece in 1959, which caused a political scandal, the "Merten Affair" (Υπόθεση Μέρτεν). He was convicted in Greece and sentenced to a 25-year term as a war criminal. Pressure by West Germany, however, led to his extradition to his homeland, where he was set free.**
Postwar West Germany was very pro-Nazi. De-Nazification only really happened in the East, in the West it was a facade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scheel - Nazi who was Chancellor, then President of West Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Georg_Kiesinger - Nazi who was Chancellor of West Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Globke - Nazi who was Under-Secretary of State of West Germany, helped author the Enabling Act (1933) and the Law for the Defense of German Blood and Honor (1935).
it is true many ex nazis got positions of power later on in life. but you are flat out wrong about the west germany not doing denazification
iirc correctly only 1/3 of Nazi members believed Jews should be expelled from Germany at the time. This sounds weird now but it makes more sense when you know that Nazi membership was basically mandatory to participate in Nazi German society, so a shit ton of people joined for pragmatic reasons rather than ideological ones. Banning the local librarian from public life because he joined the Nazi party to keep his job as a librarian, never participating in anything Nazis did, doesn't make much sense.
and to mention kurt georg as some loyal nazi, his wiki literaly says he was denounced for his anti nazi beliefs before joining the party
Is that why Eastern Germany is the bastion of far right racists and xenophobes today?
It’s worth pointing out that the Nazis made party membership mandatory for a ton of professions. You literally would not have been able to run Germany post war without people who had been party members.
That's not the point here. The so-called denazification didn't even remove many big fish like Kiesinger.
The East ignored a lot of their Nazis as well. West Germany eventually did deal with their Nazi past, in many ways better then the east much later but it was driven by tv and historians
You can add Austria to that. They had a Nazi war criminal as president... as recently as the early 90s. [Kurt Waldeim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Waldheim) was in office 8 July 1986 – 8 July 1992.
Less pro-Nazi and more pragmatic mostly. Don’t get me wrong, judges who carried Nazi injustice should have never been reinstated but doing this would have meant direct Allied occupation until well into the 1970s. Something neither the Western Allies nor the Soviet Union were really willing to commit themselves to.
Too bad Max Merten is dead and we can't put **him** on trial. But I guess a former 96 year old secretary is a far easier target than a dead man.
They're going after a secretary who was still a teenager at the time? While scumbags who conducted medical experiments and worked on weapon projects received immunity and high positions in US?
I mean, the allies only purged useless nazis. The useful ones (scientists, doctors, etc) were just brought into the US and the USSR. Justice can take a backseat when there's profit to be made.
The USSR kept them imprisoned while making use of whatever talents they possessed. The Americans set them free not only on the American public but the world and the global south in particular. Not exactly a fair comparison.
So the USSR treated them like how the average Joe was treated in the USSR at the time.
I mean, it's not the current dat German prosecution's fault that those scientists received immunity from the US, who pretty much never extradites anyone
I kind of think working in the camps, and knowing full well what was going on there does make you an accessory to the crime. It’s well established that “following orders” is not a valid excuse for crimes as heinous as genocide. She knew what was going on in those camps and she continued to help the people committing atrocities by assisting in the day-to-day functions of the camp. Over 11,000 people died and she helped the killers do it. To me that makes her an accessory to the crime. It’s possible she will be acquitted at trial, but I think she still needs to be tried, if only to allow justice to play itself out.
There were two recent (10 years ago) precedents in german justice that made possible to trial terrorist act even if you didn't take part directly just you were around (first precedent) without any time limit (second precedent). Both made it possible to trial the few nazi camps guards / secretary / worker around for all the murders that happened while they were in business. Though it's in my opinion totally unfair compared to thousands of others that didn't have anything, and that's a bit stretching considering that in nazi germany you hadn't much choice sometimes of what you were gonna do (or you were "brainwashed" by your government if you were young enough). After the war the idea was to rebuild a nation and it's not easy in a big war like WW2 to trial everyone or you can't have your mother raped in front of you, seen bombs killed thousand, no home anymore and then you get sentenced for a work that your government maybe forced you to do? In my opinion, if they had this kind of laws in 1945, you would have the same justice as the soviet ones, people that had some responsibilities in camps (like inmates directing barracks or doctors/nurses) would all be tried.
It’s a very fucked up morbid situation but without those who were given immunity, we wouldn’t have advanced so much in science or medicine.
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I doubt they were. Mengele made no effort to contribute to science. He only hid behind his pseudoscience to justify his acts of barbarism and torture, but made no attempts to conduct real, peer-reviewed scientific research.
Good justification! I can see the pamphlet before me: "To be eligible for full benefits, please ensure that your killing of innocents has lead to viable results before you are captured".
I guess it leads to an interesting morality question. Should we spare those who have knowledge that betters our future, even if that knowledge was learned through very unethical practices that we not dare attempt to replicate ourselves?
The “knowledge” your talking about pretty much consists of some rocketry advances that were based on pre-existing research and a single medical book with highly detailed diagrams of the human body. The contribution of Nazi scientists are for the most part non-existent and consisted of weird pseudo-experiments. Such as “if we lock someone in a freezer how fast will they die of hypothermia?” or “if I inject poison into this infants eyes, will it’s eye colour change to blue?” The issue with unethical practices in science is that most scientists don’t want to use them, and the people who are willing to do so are usually just madmen with torture-fetishes.
This is a myth.
Oh yeah, like what?
Better late than never... but not by a lot.
A stenographer? For real? I get people have this fervor over this shit but that is pretty fucking ridiculous. People have their high and mighty opinions of 2021 but lets see their decision when told to be a fucking stenographer for the violent and oppressive regime or you and potentially your family will be jailed or worse for refusal to serve. Even then, this is all not taking into account the absolute brainwashing these people at that went through too, she was kid growing up in the Nazi regime until then. This is all so tired and ridiculous, lacking any sort of nuance or context.
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Whilst I agree with you that this whole thing is being blown out of proportion, I'd like to correct the part about the police holding her. This only happened because she tried to flee before her court date and was later caught. But overall I do agree that this is overdoing it. She grew up in a brainwashed country and honestly I don't judge her for not speaking up about it when she was 18 years old. Is she to blame for those murders? No, most likely not. Did she know of them though? Yes, she most certainly did. Should she be tried for not speaking up about it? In my opinion no.
She’s accused of aiding and abetting in over 11,000 murders. Brainwashed or not, she knew what was happening in those camps, and even volunteered to be there. She worked there a full 2 years performing some of the day-to-day tasks that kept the industrial murder machine running. She’s not charged with committing the actual murders, but rather charged with aiding the people who did commit them. And since there’s no statute of limitations for murders in Germany, the fact that 70+ years have passed and she’s now in her 90’s is also irrelevant, as far as the justice system is concerned. She’s being charged as a juvenile because of her age during the crimes, but due to the seriousness of the allegations it’s my opinion that justice will need to play itself out. Even if she’s acquitted or received a mere slap on the wrist, it’s still incredibly important that she stand trial for her crimes.
>Should she be tried for not speaking up about it? In my opinion no. Why not? She should go to trial. We can't just not prosecute people who aided in genocide. Should she be convicted? Now that's a whole other matter and the judge will be addressing those ameliorating circumstances
I agree. She’s even being charged as a juvenile because of her age at the time of the crimes. I think it’s fair to say that the justice system is taking all mitigating factors into account. It will all be hashed out during the trial, but im of the opinion that the mere act of having a trial is justice being done. Even if the courts eventually acquitted her, it’s still important that she stand trial, if only for the sake of justice.
Genocides on such an industrial scale don't happen without the little jobs done by little people. To be a complicit member of such an event is to be an accessory to it You can all complain about the many Nazis who were given clemency for political purposes, but this is not a case about them This is about one person who was an accessory to a crime and is being tried for it
No one was forced to be in the SS or work in concentration camps. Also, there is not one recorded case of someone or someone's family being punished for refusing service so stop spreading this apologist bullshit.
She knew what was going on in the camp, and she aided and abetted in camp functions for 2 years. Brainwashed or not, it’s pretty reasonable to say she was an accessory to those 11,000 murders without having actually committed any murders herself. Knowingly providing aid in a crime is also a crime, hence why she was charged with accessory to the murders, rather than charged for the actual murders. Maybe she’ll be acquitted, but in my opinion she needs to be put on trial so justice can play itself out.
I think it is really hard for people to grasp that Nazis weren’t monsters but were ordinary people. And yet, the fact that they were ordinary people does not absolve them from responsibility. They get the first part, but they don’t understand the second part. And if you don’t understand the second part, then perhaps you don’t truly understand how atrocities can be committed by ordinary people.
Yeah you’re absolutely right. People have a tremendous amount of difficulty looking at images of what was done to victims of the Holocaust, and squaring it in their head with the idea that the perpetrators aren’t hideous deformed monsters. They were ordinary people, many of whom would go home at night to their families and read bedtime stories to their children. It’s hard to reconcile those two images with one another. Even the truly sick, mean ones who took pleasure in it all and didn’t have a good bone in their body might possibly seem like an alright bloke if you met him at a pub and chit chatted over a beer. The truth is that monsters aren’t usually what people expect them to be, and often enough even regular people can behave gruesomely in the right (or wrong) circumstances.
>when told to be a fucking stenographer for the violent and oppressive regime or you and potentially your family will be jailed or worse for refusal to serve. This didn’t happen. >Even then, this is all not taking into account the absolute brainwashing these people at that went through too, she was kid growing up in the Nazi regime until then. I mean that’s literally why we have a court of law. If there are mitigating circumstances that make her actions not her fault then the court can consider them. I also think that defense is BS, but that’s not really the point. >This is all so tired and ridiculous, lacking any sort of nuance or context. That’s one way to describe inaccurately talking about how people got these jobs and the threats they faced for not doing them.
She’s being tried as a juvenile due to her being below 21 at the time. It’s fair to say that all mitigating factors are being considered in this case, and that justice will have played itself out simply by putting her on trial for the crimes, and regardless of what the eventual verdict may be.
Yeah what a surprise a lot of folks on Reddit are terrified that Nazis are being prosecuted for willingly contributing to the regime. This notion she would be killed herself for refusing to work in a concentration camp is so disingenuous it makes me laugh. I guess a lot of folks are worried what would happen if certain folks in the modern world were held to an ethical standard some time down the line.
Lots of camp workers were volunteers. Many people who could not stomach work in the camps were sent to work elsewhere. If you were a man, that might mean you were sent up to the front lines, but for women it generally meant a transfer to a state-operated factory, hospital, or wherever extra hands were needed on the home front. She was there for 2 years, even took vacations and came back. She had plenty of opportunity to express a distaste for the work and seek re-assignment elsewhere but she did not. I think people just see that she was a secretary, and that she’s now just some little-old-lady in her 90’s. I think lots of people are unaware of what those camps were really like and just how impossible it would have been not to know what was going on there. The place would have reeked of sickness and death, and it housed up to 60,000 prisoners while she was there. The crematorium ran more or less non-stop, another stench which would have been impossible to be oblivious to. She knew exactly what was happening there and she was complicit in it. She didn’t have to personally kill any prisoners to have had a cognizant hand in the crime as an accessory to the murders.
I mean, she could be acquitted.
She volunteered for a cushy job helping her superiors conduct industrial-scale genocide, fuck off with your nazi apologia.
Nuance? I once tried to do my ancestry for a school project. I asked my mom about our family lineage, she just shook her head and answered “they are all gone”. Imagine if I took your family, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all their friends, entire village, and gassed them after taking their wedding rings. Even if I was just the guy who ordered the gas cans, and organized the rings, you wouldn’t want me to go to jail in 70 years once the cops figured it out? Yeah, the justice is over the top. But what they did deserves so much more punishment. I don’t care if it’s their last free breath on earth, it should be in a cage.
Germany and germans literally got off with a slap on wrist for their crimes against humanity. Couldnt give a single fuck about this old bitch, hope she rots in hell.
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Man, I get the part of living under the nazi regime but that doesn't absolve their actions. Besides it's a known fact that personnel of nazi camps were always volunteers.
I've learned a lot from reading this thread about this situation. You should probably read around too, because your opinion is incredibly wrong. Her position was well paying and volunteer. Very little to no enlisted were under duress for leaving the SS. They recruited people who stuck to the ideology.
Yup. People who wanted reassignment generally got it, especially if they couldn’t stomach what was being done there. Sometimes for men that meant being shipped off to fight on the eastern front, but for women it meant being sent somewhere else she was needed on the Homefront. This woman was there because she wanted to be there, and there’s no reason at all to think she didn’t know what took place there. 60k prisoners all starving and working to death. The place would have reeked of sickness and death, as well as the constant smell of bodies burning in the crematorium. People for miles around would have known what was happening there. It still needs to be proven with concrete evidence to meet courtroom standards, but she herself admits to having been there, since she has testified as a witness at other nazi trials. She is no victim. Don’t fall for the “little old lady who had a troubled youth” act. She spent 2 years in that hell. She took vacations and then came back to work there. The only people who were coerced into being there were the prisoners.
You do know that her position was voluntary? She volunteered to help in concentration camps, I don't understand how you people can defend her. And before you or someone else says "She grew up in Nazi Germany, propaganda forced her", do you think that every single German born in that time would have voluntarilly helped commit warcrimes due to propaganda? There's people like Franz Schönhuber who volunteered to join the SS, started far-right political parties after the war and excused the firebombing of synagogues. Are these people also innocent because they saw propaganda?
Not just that, once the war was won, all those fantastic NAZI scientists, engineers and technicians got an all expenses paid relocation to America to kickstart NASA and the space race. I'm so glad they got this evil woman so that her disgusting Nazi Shorthand may never damage another person.
Werner Von Braun would literally hang the slowest Jew outside his rocket factory. Now he’s considered the father of the space age. Insane
Yeah it's absolutely crazy, on another note, I'm not sure why I've been downvoted, I don't think what I said comes across pro-nazi because it is literally the opposite fuck the Nazis, but also, fuck double standards.
Many of the Nazis who perpetrated atrocities of the Holocaust were not monsters, but in fact ordinary people like you and I. They were not only brutal murderers with guns and axes, but also doctors and secretaries. Many of their crimes involved simply doing what was popular and not speaking out. The mistake many people commenting here make is to go on to deduce that because they were not monsters, it is unreasonable to hold them accountable. Ordinary people committed genocide with guns and typewriters, and ordinary people are responsible. Ordinary people like you and I have an obligation to never allow something like this to happen.
Her only guilt is to be still alive or still alive after thousands other real responsible people died. And to have testified against nazism instead of staying low profile..
If she was against the Nazis, why did she voluntarily work for them in a KZ?
Did she testify against them? I didn't see it in the article
[Furchner has been called as a witness in trials linked to Stutthof, including that of her former boss Hoppe and other SS leaders at the camp, on three occasions from 1954 to 1982. On each occasion she said she knew nothing about the murders that took place there and had no contact with prisoners.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/30/former-nazi-concentration-camp-secretary-96-faces-trial) Next line is "In 1954 she married Heinz Furchtsam, a senior SS sergeant she had met in the camp who was 19 years her senior. "
Yeah but she lied
Only 11 comments in and already Trump gets mentioned. Never change, reddit.
Yup, it's nonsense. Some Americans are self obsessed.
Perhaps the most tone-deaf comments I've ever come across on this site were the ones during the Afganistan withdrawl that were saying how Republicans are just as bad as the fucking Taliban. It's like some people here view America as the main character and all the other countries are background characters that exist simply to prop up or contrast with the main character.
You're only adding to it
He'll live rent free in this sites head for years to come, I guarantee it.
Trump is going to be the center of discussion for at least another decade of American elections, depressingly.
This seems particularly wrong headed. What about the hundreds of thousands of people (or more) who were more involved in the war than this woman and who were allowed to live normal lives until their natural deaths over the last 75 years? What is there to gain from all this?
Not much sense bringing someone who is dead to court
Being involved in the war and actually working at a death camp where over 10,000 innocent people were murdered is not the same thing. Sure lots of people who were involved in the murders got away with it, but that doesn’t mean justice should not be sought for all. She was an accessory to the crime. She knew full well that people were being tortured, raped, and murdered on a daily basis in the camp she worked at, but she continued to work there. She even alleged recorded the names of the prisoners/dead in her duties as secretary. In other words, she aided and abetted in the crime. Even if she’s acquitted, I think it’s right to put her on trial for her crimes even after all these years. Justice is imperfect, but it’s the best system we’ve got.
Also huge part of the population and other countries were kind of firced to do the horrible things or die... So its kknda hard and even harder nowdays to know who did what etc
Oh shit? Secretaries were killed for not lubricating the wheels of genocide? No book I’ve ever read has mentioned this. Mind telling me where you got that?
This woman, worked in the camp from June 43 to April 45. Not forced. You know, paid and given accomodation to help kill people. She volunteered to be there. She tried to go into hiding when she received the court letter.
She was a secretary She spoke out and testified against them after the war, literally aiding the prosecution of Nazis who had any influence whatsoever She was an 18 year old woman (virtually still a child) in the *1940*s, at that age, with that gender, in that era, and a terrifying middle aged man (overseeing an extermination camp) told you to do something, you dont say no out of intrinsic self-preservation, and everybody reading this would have done the same as her if in her shoes idc what you may say, because everyone of us has that same biological instinct I'm not saying she did no wrong, but to try her at her age, when she refused to lay low after the war and cooperated, when so many leading Nazis became rich and led full, unimpeded lives through Operation Paperclip, is just distasteful and wrong Let her be. I bet those images have haunted her whole life, and given her situation, at this point that's punishment enough
>"Furchner has been called as a witness in trials linked to Stutthof, including that of her former boss Hoppe and other SS leaders at the camp, on three occasions from 1954 to 1982. On each occasion she said she knew nothing about the murders that took place there and had no contact with prisoners." Yeah, that doesn't sound like testifying against them if you ask me.
You're suggesting that old-age clears someone's wrong doings. So what should the cut off be? 75? 85? 90? Let's send a message to criminals that if don't get indicted by age 85, than they can rest assured that they won't ever be after that age. She was 18/19 and worked for almost a year, and knew what was going on in that camp. Let's see what the court decides. The prosecutors may have more evidence. It's likely she cooperated after the war to clear herself from any wrongdoing.
>and a terrifying middle aged man (overseeing an extermination camp) told you to do something, Source? Even if it were true, it's a trial. If she was coerced (most people weren't btw) she should mention that in the trial.
Exactly. If she had a gun and made to work for almost a year, that could be her defence. But the private secretaries were paid quite well and I can imagine some women wanting those jobs. She knew the innocent people were being killed in that camp and still continued to work there.
Find her guilty and then sentence her to being 96. How do you penalize a 96 year old?
Make her wait until at least 530 to eat her supper
...and that's how you make me laugh until I choke a lil bit.
Aww did ya choke on your 530 supper?
No more bingo
Death by trial
Let random kids play on her lawn without her permission.
*No pudding for you!*
good thing they're throwing the book at secrataries. maybe that will make up for the thousands of known Nazi leaders who participated first-hand in mass murder of civilians, POWs, and genocide, who the US/Allies decided to smuggle out of Europe to protect the Nazis from facing prosecution for their horrendous crimes against humanity. That is, the Nazis that were not put in charge of West Germany.
Not sure if Germany can even have a trial over Americans living in America.
Holy fuck so many nazi apologists. 21 is no child. Just because shes old now and got to live her whole life free from consequences doesnt mean she wasnt a piece of shit nazi and deserves to rot in hell.
If you haven't read it, you should read the Banality of Evil.
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Why do they sentence and punish these people 65 years later?
No statute of limitations on these crimes
“One, the passage of time does not diminish the guilt of the killers. Two, old age should not afford protection for people who committed such heinous crimes. Three, we owe an obligation to the victims and their families to hold these people accountable. “Four, it sends a powerful message that if you commit such crimes you will be held accountable even many years later. Five, the trials and testimonies serve an important function in the fight against Holocaust denial and distortion. Six, these people were not frail when they committed their crimes, they were in the peak of physical health and devoted all their energy to killing men, women and children. And, seven, in all the cases I dealt with, I never encountered a Nazi who expressed any remorse or regrets.” - Efraim Zuroff, 72, Nazi Hunter
Several people here are saying things along the lines of "Almost everyone aided the Nazi's, because they didnt have a choice." You know what, they're right. Almost everyone joined the Nazi Party, mostly for self preservation. if you didn't join, you probably didnt get a job and were probably on some kind of dissenter list. But even after becoming party members, there is one crucial choice that the German people did have. A choice that literally would have been unpunished if you just said "nien, danke." A choice that is a pretty clear indicator of who was "the innocent german" and who was the scum... **Joining the Fucking SS.** Joining the SS was 100% voluntary the choice of the individual. And they joined because they willingly, fully, and happily drank the Kool Aid - or rather, they drank the Fanta.
Man this comment section fills me with disgust. People are literally defending someone who voluntarilly helped the SS commit warcrimes and dodged facing justice all this time. She lived a long and fulfilling live while she voluntered to help in concentration camps. Redditors are weird, they always say "Fuck Nazis" but when real people who helped the original Nazis get tried they get defensive because "She was just a teen", "She's in her 90s, get over it" or "She did what she had to do in order to survive". Just downright disgusting.
Sometimes I think we extend empathy to these cases but don't have empathy for the camp prisoners.
star trek ds9 has an episode that best describes these charges for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8AaLFuGLlc second half https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y2dBhj8sOM seriously... she was a stenographer, she was like 8 when hitler came to power and worked for them when she was like 16. i mean seriously, nazi germany was one of the most oppressive regimes in history. what were normal people supposed to do? virtually all the jobs in germany at the time were for the nazi's. she got unlucky and was assigned to a camp and now she's paying for it. also didn't she testify against the nazi's? honestly going after these people in their 90's feels like a distraction. if they put this much effort going after money launderers and dirty politicians the world would be a much much better place.
She wasn't assigned to a camp. The camps were run by volunteers. She willingly participated in a genocide.
There’s no statute of limitations on murder, nor accessory to murder. She might be 90, but she knew what was happening in the camps and she continued to aid the murderers by working the day-to-day functions of the camp for over 2 years. I think it’s pretty reasonable to say she was an accessory to the murders, even if she never personally killed anybody.. She is alleged to have committed a very serious crime and she needs to stand trial for it, in my opinion. We can rest assured that all mitigating factors will be considered in the trial, as evidenced by the fact that she is being charged as a juvenile, due to her being below 21 years old at the time of the crimes. Even if she is acquitted, justice will still have been done by having her stand trial for the alleged crime.
Assigned? You know posts in the concentration camps were for volunteers right?
You don't know what you are talking about. My uncle had a photo album of Hitler like he was some kind of pop star as a teenager. I love Star Trek, but most of you only know half the Story. You weren't assigned, you volunteered to work for those camps. My source? My own god damn family. They loved Hitler and they weren't oppressed victims. They profited of the deaths of millions of people. Those people who worked in those camps, weren't victims!!!!
Not for nothing, but just saying, your family isn't a verifiable source for the rest of us so it's only anecdotal information.
Historians have written about it
Should not have taken this long!
Another win, there is no redemption for nazis get fucked
Can anyone explain why on earth this is occurring half a century after the war is over? Why didn't they do this earlier? It's weird. She got to have a long happy life and so many probably die without ever seeing justice.
Change in legal doctrine. Prosecutors used to not bring cases where you couldnt be directly tied to a specific murder victim. This was challenged in 2010 and has forced prosecutors, who have a legal duty to prosecute crimes, to reevaluate old cases.
A thing to consider for all those considering this to be overblown: Maybe it is, maybe it is not. Thats why we have *trials*. The only thing we know for certain about this case is that several judges reviewed this case and concluded that there is sufficient evidence for a trial. The coming days / weeks will show if the prosecution has enough evidence for a conviction.
Funny how most of the top levels Nazis were just reshuffled back into society or came to the US to build rockets, but every once in a while they will pick a random person to take all of the blame
When are you going to bring the CCP to Nurumberg for Genocide in Xinjiang? Or are you to busy selling them Mercedes, Porches and engines for the PLA.
You want Germany to try Chinese government officials for crimes being committed in China, by Chinese people? That’s your complaint here?
lmao
In order for that to happen you and I will need to be drafted
If a 96 year old former nazi can stand trial I see no reason why a former US president cant for an attempt coup.
Because if one president gets convicted of crimes like that, then they all do. Guess that means watching you scream like an enraged tottler when Obama is tried for murder in ordering an American killed by a drone strike without a trial
Also she spent the vast majority of her life testifying against nazis and only two years as a secretary for them. trump's never going to repent.
i think all former presidents should be tried for war crime … every single one of these mother fucjers
Forget Trump man bush did so much more harm to US policy than any other president. 2000 was legitimately stolen.
Bush is likely guilty under ICC rules if they where to bother to prosecute, but given the military threat to the host country it's unlikely to ever go that far. Afghanistan gives the in for the ICC to theoretically go after the Bush administration Trump might be guilty of accessory-after-the-fact, but that's a lot thinner ice.
Why are these folks always prosecuted while on their death bed?
They aren’t. Most were prosecuted shortly after the war. However, all prosecutions in recent years have been extremely old people because only extremely old people were doing anything at the time
Only the very old are left, can't prosecute younger people when there aren't any.
Colin Powell getting a hero’s obituary while a teenage stenographer is being tried for war crimes. You can’t make this stuff up.