interesting article re: Holocaust war crimes

[ninwa]

http://blogs.news.com.au/jackmarxlive/index.php/news/comments/the_war_that_has_no_end/

Last week, 88-year-old Heinrich Boere was taken from his bed at a nursing home in Eschweiler, Germany and sent to prison for the rest of his days. His crime was to kill three people during World War II, a conflict that saw upwards of 60 million deaths worldwide. Like millions of others who killed during the conflict that raged over 60 years ago, Heinrich Boere has maintained a law-abiding existence ever since. But the arm of the law is long and unmerciful when you’re German, and your pursuers are Jewish.

...

No reasonable person could fail to sympathise with the Jewish desire for justice after the atrocities that befell their people in World War II. But when that machinery persecutes those as far down the food chain as Heinrich Boere, an enlisted soldier who gave no orders but simply followed those of his superiors, in a time when the men who governed us were ordering the wholesale slaughter of men and women and children, it begins to look less like “justice” and more like rank-and-file revenge, a racially-motivated grudge as merciless and blind to reason as the very evil it seeks to avenge.

[Twenty10]

You don't hear about Americans getting sent to Jail when they murder innocent people.

One time there was footage released of American soldiers pissing on prisoners. I'm sure there are worse things than that going on when the cameras are off.

From the comments:  "what is the benefit to society in locking up an 88 year old man? Just seems pretty pointless. "

[TrueLight]

yeah i know huh why isn't Dick Cheney in jail

and what about those Americans who funded the holocaust
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_02.htm
and bayer still exists...

always scapegoats.

[slothpomba]

Yeah thats messed up, the jews have been pretty persistant in hunting down nazis though.. this is a little too far

[Yitzi_K]

Are you people insane?

I'm Jewish. I go to synagogue every day. There are people there who I see every day with numbers tattooed on their arms. The stories they can tell are horrific, they'd reduce you to tears in seconds.

I know literally hundreds of people who've lost family members to the nazis.

Now why the f### should the perpetrators get away with it simply because they've grown old since? They committed terrible, evil crimes. For whatever reason, they weren't persecuted at the time, although they should have been.

Now, finally, justice is coming to those who deserve it. It doesn't matter that now they're old. The fact is, they committed crimes worthy of death followed by hell. Punishment HAS to be meted out to those who deserve it, no matter how much time has passed. The victims of their crimes are still suffering today. Why should the perpetrators not be?

Also, what message would you be sending if you didn't prosecute? That it's ok to do a crime as long as you get old before you're caught??

[ninwa]

I don't have a Jewish background and have only heard second-hand stories of Holocaust survivors, but I did study it for a couple of years and have gained some appreciation for the scale and horror of it.

I know this is a sensitive topic and for the record I'm on the fence at the moment - I've read one side and now I'd like to get your side of it.

If you read Jack Marx's article, he includes this:

On July 9, 1944, a German unit retreating through the Belarussian forest from the advancing Russians stumbled across the encampment of the Bielski partisans, the famed Jewish freedom fighters who saved Jews from the concentration camps and fought a stubborn guerrilla war against the Nazi forces. In the ensuing firefight, nine Bielski partisans were killed before the Germans were overrun and fled, but four German soldiers surrendered and were taken back to the Bielski forest base. What happened next is described by Jewish survivors who spoke in the documentary, Defiance - The Bielski Brothers:

Lea Friedberg: “By that time, the guys...you could see they were going crazy.”

Leah Johnson: “And we were standing all around them. And everybody was going over to them and hitting them and talking to them and spitting at them and shouting and crying...”

Beryl Chafetz: “And the Germans were begging us, begging us, begging us: ‘It’s not our fault! It’s the leaders! I don’t know anything about it! I don’t know anything about it! I’m innocent and innocent and innocent and innocent!”

Leah Johnson: All of a sudden I see my husband come over to one German with his rifle, and he says: ‘Open your mouth!’ He opened the mouth, and he put the rifle into his mouth and...it came through the other side.”

Sonya Oshman:  “Everybody said: ‘This is for my mother. This is for my father. This is for my brother. This is for my aunt. This is for this and this.’ And we beat them to death. Why not?”

This is murder - understandable, perhaps, and one could argue that to let the Germans live might have compromised the safety of the partisans (an argument not dissimilar to Boere’s). But, if the same rigors of law are applied to the Bielski partisans as have been applied to Heinrich Boere, the guilty are even moreso for the fact they were following nobody’s orders but their own, not to mention that, after 65 years, there is no remorse at all, the participants proudly defiant regarding the murders to this very day. It is fortunate for the Bielski partisans that the world has always viewed war crimes from the Second World War in Europe as an exclusively German phenomenon.

“We were enraged by the war, so thirsty for revenge,” says Mike Stoll in Defiance. “And that revenge was in you for a long time...there was not enough payback.”

Do you think they should be prosecuted (if they are still alive)? If not, why not?

[Twenty10]

I think its a case of kill, or be killed. :/

[saaaaaam]

I think its a case of kill, or be killed. :/

Those were the exact words I was thinking. I find it hard to punish someone who had no other choice but death themselves. The leaders, the masterminds, those who committed these crimes by choice, I think they deserve every punish that they get/got.

[Yitzi_K]

Do you think they should be prosecuted (if they are still alive)? If not, why not?

Absolutely not. There is a reason those people were hiding in a forest. The reason is because of those German soldiers. Had the soldiers found the Bielski group unprepared, and beaten them, then every single person in that forest, the men, the woman and the children, would have been killed, some in horrific ways.

Most likely, every member of the Bielski group had already lost family members to the Nazis.

There is no way you can compare the actions of the Germans in the Holocaust, who systematically set out to kill every single Jew bar none, to the actions of a few desperate, probably half-starved people who were simply doing their bit to help the war effort.

The important thing to note is who began the cycle. Had the Germans not persecuted and massacred the Jews, then those Jews wouldn't have been in the forest, and those German soldiers would never have been killed.

[ninwa]

From what I can see, your justification is that the Bielski group had no choice.

But he said he was following orders and would have been shot for not doing so.

...

He told the state court that he and fellow members of the SS Silbertanne (Silver Pine) death squad had been informed by their superiors that the men were to be killed in retaliation for attacks by the resistance.

"I knew that if I didn't carry out my orders I would be breaking my oath and would be shot myself," he said. 

...

He was 18 when he joined the Waffen SS

Heinrich Boere was just 18 when the Nazis rolled into Holland in 1940. Had he not volunteered for the Waffen-SS, he would probably have been deported to work in a German factory, or fallen victim to starvation like so many in The Netherlands under Nazi occupation. Perhaps the impressionable half-German boy (his father was Dutch, his mother German) simply swallowed the Nazi propaganda being laid on thick by Arthur Seyss-Inquart and the NSB. Many thousands did. Whatever the case, Boere was sent to the Eastern Front in June of 1941, where he was seasoned by more violence than today’s 19 year old would be able to consume over a year at the cinema. He was sent home to Holland as a casualty in December of 1942.

A lot of us would say "I would never murder innocent people - I would rather die myself", but when actually faced with that decision, how many of us would actually fight against our basest human instincts and choose death? It's easy to sit in front of a computer in a safe developed country and condemn the actions of those in war.

As for who began the cycle - by your logic, the Japanese deserved the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing because they shouldn't have invaded China/Russia in the first place.

The German soldiers were also merely "helping in the war effort". Why is it only valid when the Bielskis were doing it? Because they were the minority? Given the ability, could you honestly say that the Jewish population would not also have systematically set out to kill every German they could get their hands on?

[Yitzi_K]

From what I can see, your justification is that the Bielski group had no choice.

But he said he was following orders and would have been shot for not doing so.

...

He told the state court that he and fellow members of the SS Silbertanne (Silver Pine) death squad had been informed by their superiors that the men were to be killed in retaliation for attacks by the resistance.

"I knew that if I didn't carry out my orders I would be breaking my oath and would be shot myself," he said. 

...

He was 18 when he joined the Waffen SS

Heinrich Boere was just 18 when the Nazis rolled into Holland in 1940. Had he not volunteered for the Waffen-SS, he would probably have been deported to work in a German factory, or fallen victim to starvation like so many in The Netherlands under Nazi occupation. Perhaps the impressionable half-German boy (his father was Dutch, his mother German) simply swallowed the Nazi propaganda being laid on thick by Arthur Seyss-Inquart and the NSB. Many thousands did. Whatever the case, Boere was sent to the Eastern Front in June of 1941, where he was seasoned by more violence than today’s 19 year old would be able to consume over a year at the cinema. He was sent home to Holland as a casualty in December of 1942.

A lot of us would say "I would never murder innocent people - I would rather die myself", but when actually faced with that decision, how many of us would actually fight against our basest human instincts and choose death? It's easy to sit in front of a computer in a safe developed country and condemn the actions of those in war.

As for who began the cycle - by your logic, the Japanese deserved the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing because they shouldn't have invaded China/Russia in the first place.

The German soldiers were also merely "helping in the war effort". Why is it only valid when the Bielskis were doing it? Because they were the minority? Given the ability, could you honestly say that the Jewish population would not also have systematically set out to kill every German they could get their hands on?

So he should have allowed himself to be shot. Yes, I know that is easy for me to say, but I genuinely believe that would have been the right thing to do.

And no, the german soldiers were not merely helping the war effort. Herding 100 Jewish children into a cattle car and sending them off to their deaths was not helping the war effort. It was pure, unadulterated evil, whether they were acting under orders or not.

And perhaps the Japanese didn't quite deserve Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they certainly brought it upon themselves.

[/0]

If he had allowed himself to be shot, his superior officer would simply have ordered one of his comrades to do the murder. And if they all refused and were shot then the superior officer would simply do the deed himself. The outcome would be the same no matter what the soldier did, except obeying orders would allow him to live. That's the insanity of war.

The Japanese "certainly brought it upon themselves"? What about the civilians who had nothing to do with the war? You can't possibly say they brought it upon themselves, and yet they were the ones who were killed in Hiroshima.

[ninwa]

So he should have allowed himself to be shot. Yes, I know that is easy for me to say, but I genuinely believe that would have been the right thing to do.

Of course it would have been the right thing to do. That was not my point. My point is that it is easy to say something like that in the safety of our homes, in the middle of a relatively peaceful period in a relatively peaceful country.
But when actually faced with such a situation, I'm willing to bet most of us would choose life.

[QuantumJG]

That was a shocking time and I hated the war and what happened to people.

In the early part of the era (1947 - 1989) when the Soviet union invaded Hungary, my grandfather's (then ~17) family was put in a concentration camp and left to starve, his father was tortured then killed and he had to escape the country by hiding in a vehicle that took out dead bodies.

Also Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have never happened, heaps of civillians were killed in the most inhumane manner.

Also with that guy, those times were the most oppressive and if he chose to not follow orders he wouldn't have been killed exactly nicely. What happened to my grandfather's family was due to his father deciding to not work for the soviets.

[Yitzi_K]

So he should have allowed himself to be shot. Yes, I know that is easy for me to say, but I genuinely believe that would have been the right thing to do.

Of course it would have been the right thing to do. That was not my point. My point is that it is easy to say something like that in the safety of our homes, in the middle of a relatively peaceful period in a relatively peaceful country.
But when actually faced with such a situation, I'm willing to bet most of us would choose life.

Maybe that's true. But if it is, then we would all deserve the punishment.