German woman, 91, charged in 260,000 Auschwitz deaths

[jimmy olsen]

What do you guys think of this change in policy to broaden prosecutions from those directly responsible to everyone involved?

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/09/22/1-year-old-woman-charged-with-260000-counts-complicity-to-murder-in-auschwitz/

German woman, 91, charged in 260,000 Auschwitz deaths

Published September 22, 2015

German prosecutors have charged a 91-year-old woman with playing a role in the deaths of 260,000 Jews at the infamous Auschwitz death camp.

The unidentified woman, who authorities say served as member of the Nazi SS is accused of serving as a radio operator for the camp commandant from April to July 1944, The Times of Israel reports. During that time, huge numbers of Hungarian Jews were murdered in gas chambers.

Prosecutors argue that she can be charged as an accessory because she aided in the operation of the death camp. Heinz Doellel, a spokesman for the prosecutor, said there are no indications the woman is unfit for trial, though a court likely won't decide on whether to proceed with the case until next year.

The case is the latest in a series of attempts by Germany to bring surviving Holocaust perpetrators to justice. Only 50 of the 6,500 former SS members who served at Auschwitz have been convicted in Germany, as the courts long claimed only senior Nazi leadership could be held responsible for Holocaust crimes, The Telegraph reports.

Earlier this year, a 94-year-old man known as the "bookkeeper of Auschwitz" was incarcerated under similar circumstances. Prosecutors argued Oskar Groenig's presence when Jews entered the camp created a threatening impression, the BBC says.

Groenig admitted in a 2005 BBC documentary that he had been present on the ramp when selections for the gas chambers took place, and said during the trial he bears a share of the moral guilt for atrocities committed at the camp.


The former SS member was in charge of confiscating prisoners' luggage upon entry and deceiving them by saying their belongings would be returned. He would instead sort and count their money and ship it to Nazis in Berlin.

He was sentenced to four years in prison in connection with the murder of 300,000 people at the death camp. The judgment claims he "supported multiple murders, without providing support to specific individual acts," the BBC adds.

The decision marks a departure from the court's decades-old practice of requiring proof former SS members directly committed at least one crime in order to be convicted.

Some 1.1 million people, most of them European Jews, died between 1940 and 1945 at Auschwitz before it was liberated by Soviet forces.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

[katmai]

FFS with ll the useless threads you start, one would think you know how to create a thread title.

[jimmy olsen]

FFS with ll the useless threads you start, one would think you know how to create a thread title.

Sorry. 

[Eddie Teach]

What do you guys think of this change in policy to broaden prosecutions from those directly responsible to everyone involved?

I think it's scapegoating, and thus shameful.

The people responsible are gone, but the feelings of national guilt remain. So these prosecutors must prosecute somebody to assuage their own consciences over what their grandfathers did.

Did this woman's radio operations help bring about those deaths? I suppose they did. But then, so did the whole damn society. The Wehrmacht soldiers keeping the foreign soldiers from liberating the camps, the cops checking papers and detaining Jews, the narcs and informants, the engineers who kept the trains running, the Nazi party members providing moral support for the regime, etc.

[Syt]

If you want to put someone on trial do it right:


"Great outrage over crepy project: UFO-Sect wants to clone Hitler!"
(The small print says they want to clone him to put him on trial.)

[Monoriu]

I think this has gone too far.  Might as well prosecute everybody who was an adult during 1941-1945.  If you expand the guilt to those absurd levels, is there anybody in Germany who could claim innocence?  If the radio operator deserves to be jailed, then what about the guys who made the radio?  The delivery people who brought the radio to the camp?  The guys who built the camp?  Every German soldier who took part in the war? 

[Martinus]

I think this has gone too far.  Might as well prosecute everybody who was an adult during 1941-1945.  If you expand the guilt to those absurd levels, is there anybody in Germany who could claim innocence?  If the radio operator deserves to be jailed, then what about the guys who made the radio?  The delivery people who brought the radio to the camp?  The guys who built the camp?  Every German soldier who took part in the war?

This is hardly a leap to "anybody in Germany" though. Slippery slope arguments suck and lead to wanton vandalism, rape and murder.

[Jaron]

How much is she being charged per head?

[Martinus]

What do you guys think of this change in policy to broaden prosecutions from those directly responsible to everyone involved?

I think a good rule of thumb would be that anyone who worked, in any official capacity (not as a prisoner/forced worker) at a camp while people were being killed there could be held liable. Personally, I don't see any substantial difference between a camp guard and an officer operating a radio station at a camp.

[garbon]

What do you guys think of this change in policy to broaden prosecutions from those directly responsible to everyone involved?

I think a good rule of thumb would be that anyone who worked, in any official capacity (not as a prisoner/forced worker) at a camp while people were being killed there could be held liable. Personally, I don't see any substantial difference between a camp guard and an officer operating a radio station at a camp.

[grumbler]

The SS was a criminal organization.  Members were thus criminals and liable for the crimes committed by the organization.  I'd make an exception for those involuntarily drafted into the SS late in the war, but everyone else is liable.  Fuck them.  You should be able to imprison them just for being the kind of people who would join an organization like the SS.

[Malthus]

The SS was a criminal organization.  Members were thus criminals and liable for the crimes committed by the organization.  I'd make an exception for those involuntarily drafted into the SS late in the war, but everyone else is liable.  Fuck them.  You should be able to imprison them just for being the kind of people who would join an organization like the SS.

"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member" - not a problem, with me and the SS. 

[The Brain]

The SS was a criminal organization.  Members were thus criminals and liable for the crimes committed by the organization.  I'd make an exception for those involuntarily drafted into the SS late in the war, but everyone else is liable.  Fuck them.  You should be able to imprison them just for being the kind of people who would join an organization like the SS.

And no moon landings? 

Right, they never happened anyway.

[The Brain]

I assume all Stasi informants have been put on trial.

[Martinus]

The SS was a criminal organization.  Members were thus criminals and liable for the crimes committed by the organization.  I'd make an exception for those involuntarily drafted into the SS late in the war, but everyone else is liable.  Fuck them.  You should be able to imprison them just for being the kind of people who would join an organization like the SS.

Notice the woman is not sentenced yet, she is just being put on trial. I am pretty confident Germany is a country with rule of law, so she is going to be able to argue all attenuating circumstances during the trial.