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

[grumbler]

And no moon landings? 

Right, they never happened anyway.

No, there were no SS moon landings.  That was just a movie.

[grumbler]

What are the facts?  What exactly were her roles?  What did she know?  What did she assist in?  Are there extenuating circumstances?  Inculpatory ones?

And how can anyone prejudge the case either way without knowing the answers?

There's a reason why they have trials.  Cynics aside, it's not just a hollow ritual.

" In cases where a group or organisation is declared criminal by the Tribunal, the competent national authority of any Signatory shall have the right to bring individuals to trial for membership therein before national, military or occupation courts. In any such case the criminal nature of the group or organisation is considered proved and shall not be questioned."

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/imtconst.asp

Conclusions: The SS was utilised for the purposes which were criminal under the Charter involving the persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labour programme and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. The defendant Kaltenbrunner was a member of the SS implicated in these activities. In dealing with the SS the Tribunal includes all persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS including the members of the Allgemeine SS, members of the Waffen SS, members of the SS Totenkopf Verbaende and the members of any of the different police forces who were members of the SS. The Tribunal does not include the so-called SS riding units. The Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuehrer SS (commonly known as the SD) is dealt with in the Tribunal's Judgment on the Gestapo and SD.

Tribunal declares to be criminal within the meaning of the Charter the group composed of those persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS as enumerated in the preceding paragraph who became or remained members of the organisation with knowledge that it was being used for the commission of acts declared criminal by Article 6 of the Charter or who were personally implicated as members of the organisation in the commission of such crimes, excluding, however, those who were drafted into membership by the State in such a way as to give them no choice in the matter, and who had committed no such crimes. The basis of this finding is the participation of the organisation in war crimes and crimes against humanity connected with the war; this group declared criminal cannot include, therefore, persons who had ceased to belong to the organisations enumerated in the preceding paragraph prior to 1st September, 1939.

Seems pretty open-and-shut to me.  I cannot imagine there could exist evidence that
(1) she didn't know she was in the SS
(2) she didn't know that people were being killed at Auschwitz, or
(3) in the absence of the above, that it was still okay for her to belong to the SS and help kill people.

I suppose she could turn out to have been pretending to belong to the SS as part of some spy network for the Allies, and thus get the benefit of condition (3) above.  It seems to me that it is unlikely that she wouldn't have said so before now, though.

[viper37]

She could pretend she was coerced into joining the SS by her family/husband/government/whatever.  Doubtful it would work, but as a non lawyer, it's pretty much the only defense I can think of for this case.

[Eddie Teach]

She could pretend she was coerced into joining the SS by her family/husband/government/whatever.  Doubtful it would work, but as a non lawyer, it's pretty much the only defense I can think of for this case.

Yes, once you've retroactively declared membership in the SS to be a crime, she's guilty of that.

[Martinus]

If I read the part bolded by grumbler right, conditions 1 and 2 are cumulative.

[The Minsky Moment]

Seems pretty open-and-shut to me.

Against Ernst Kaltenbrunner sure.

[The Minsky Moment]

Actually I believe investigations can take place before a trial.

And who among the commenters here are privy to the results of the investigation of this unnamed person?

[garbon]

No one. But then I didn't realize that we could comment or speculate here without having all the facts.

[The Minsky Moment]

No one. But then I didn't realize that we could comment or speculate here without having all the facts.

You don't need all the facts.
But it would be nice to have a least one.

[garbon]

No one. But then I didn't realize that we could comment or speculate here without having all the facts.

You don't need all the facts.
But it would be nice to have a least one.

"a 91-year-old woman [has been charged] with playing a role in the deaths of 260,000 Jews at the infamous Auschwitz death camp."

[Caliga]

Btw, if Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge (played by that hott actress in Der Untergang) wasn't put on trial (which I don't think she was) it seems weird to go after SS radio operators.

Oh, but Junge "didn't know what was going on".

[alfred russel]

Seems pretty open-and-shut to me.  I cannot imagine there could exist evidence that
(1) she didn't know she was in the SS
(2) she didn't know that people were being killed at Auschwitz, or
(3) in the absence of the above, that it was still okay for her to belong to the SS and help kill people.

I suppose she could turn out to have been pretending to belong to the SS as part of some spy network for the Allies, and thus get the benefit of condition (3) above.  It seems to me that it is unlikely that she wouldn't have said so before now, though.

She could also argue that she didn't realize the SS was a criminal organization when she joined, and thus lacked mens rea. She could argue she was coerced into staying (probably not too hard, I assume you couldn't just quit the SS), and her actions in the SS did not directly tie into criminal activity.

[Martinus]

Seems pretty open-and-shut to me.  I cannot imagine there could exist evidence that
(1) she didn't know she was in the SS
(2) she didn't know that people were being killed at Auschwitz, or
(3) in the absence of the above, that it was still okay for her to belong to the SS and help kill people.

I suppose she could turn out to have been pretending to belong to the SS as part of some spy network for the Allies, and thus get the benefit of condition (3) above.  It seems to me that it is unlikely that she wouldn't have said so before now, though.

She could also argue that she didn't realize the SS was a criminal organization when she joined, and thus lacked mens rea. She could argue she was coerced into staying (probably not too hard, I assume you couldn't just quit the SS), and her actions in the SS did not directly tie into criminal activity.

That last part is irrelevant. I suppose the other two parts would be difficult to prove.

[dps]

She could also argue that she didn't realize the SS was a criminal organization when she joined, and thus lacked mens rea. She could argue she was coerced into staying (probably not too hard, I assume you couldn't just quit the SS), and her actions in the SS did not directly tie into criminal activity.

That last part is irrelevant. I suppose the other two parts would be difficult to prove.

The first part would be very easy to prove, but it would be irrelevant:

In cases where a group or organisation is declared criminal by the Tribunal, the competent national authority of any Signatory shall have the right to bring individuals to trial for membership therein before national, military or occupation courts. In any such case the criminal nature of the group or organisation is considered proved and shall not be questioned.

Now, that wouldn't pass constitutional muster in the US, because it's clearly ex post facto, but she's not being tried in the States.

[alfred russel]

She could also argue that she didn't realize the SS was a criminal organization when she joined, and thus lacked mens rea. She could argue she was coerced into staying (probably not too hard, I assume you couldn't just quit the SS), and her actions in the SS did not directly tie into criminal activity.

That last part is irrelevant. I suppose the other two parts would be difficult to prove.

The first part would be very easy to prove, but it would be irrelevant:

In cases where a group or organisation is declared criminal by the Tribunal, the competent national authority of any Signatory shall have the right to bring individuals to trial for membership therein before national, military or occupation courts. In any such case the criminal nature of the group or organisation is considered proved and shall not be questioned.

Now, that wouldn't pass constitutional muster in the US, because it's clearly ex post facto, but she's not being tried in the States.

No--if the mens rea concept is necessary, and I have no idea but assume it is, a person has to act with a guilty intent. To the extent that joining the SS is a crime as it is a criminal organization, she had to understand that it was engaged in criminal activity at the time she joined. The defense that she didn't understand would be different than arguing that arguing that the SS was not a criminal organization.