Posted on 08/17/2004 11:04:34 AM PDT by Willie Green
In the sleepy Mercer County town of Sharon, the most trouble locals have to contend with are the thousands of noisy bikers who roll into town for weekly parties at the massive Quaker Steak and Lube restaurant. A few of the less enlightened Harley riders might wear swastikas or iron crosses on their leather vests, but that's about it for evidence of fascist sympathies.
Which explains why neighbors of retired steelworker Anton Geiser, 79, were shocked to learn the U.S. Department of Justice is trying to throw the quiet old guy out of the country.
Geiser, government officials say, worked as a guard at two Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Those are places where millions of people were tortured, starved and murdered.
As a result of his alleged involvement, Geiser could be stripped of his U.S. citizenship and deported. He isn't commenting on the Justice Department's civil lawsuit.
Now I'm in no way defending Nazis or Adolf Hitler, but check this out: In the years immediately following World War II, the U.S. government cozied up to lots of known Nazis -- many of whom were recruited to run our young ballistic missile, jet aircraft and space programs. During the opening of the Cold War, the United States was so preoccupied with the Soviet Union that all but the worst former followers of Hitler could move here with few questions.
Geiser, if the allegations are true, was only one of many.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
Kill him. Kill his children. Kill his grandchildren. Let's keep the hate going for the next 5000 years, long past the point when anyone remembers why. Will we humans ever learn anything?
At 18 years old, as a Marine, if I received orders that were as unquestionably immoral as the ones Geiser obeyed, I'd've shot the SOB giving them.
Yes it is.
Nevertheless, that is a definition that Holocaust victims will eventually have to come to grips with.
The emotional scars left by such horrific atrocities understandably run very deep.
They are never truly healed until one can express forgiveness and mercy, looking forward to the future rather than seeking retribution for the past.
And as an 8-year-old schoolchild, growing up under a Nazi dictatorship as Geiser did, where would you have obtained your moral frame of reference to decide what was "unquestionably" immoral?
How about church? You know, the Ten Commandments thingie?
My FIL served on a navy base in France as a member of the German Navy and was welcomed here. This guy lied on his application for entry and citizenship. He has no claim on us.
The year was 1974, the country was in the midst of its first gas crisis and the price of gasoline was skyrocketing. Speed limits were soon to be set at 55 M.P.H. nationwide, gas stations were closing and the call went out to develop cars that got better mileage...but what to do with those old gas stations and high-powered muscle cars?
Enter George "Jig" Warren III and Gary "Moe" Meszaros to save the day. Well maybe not necessarily the entire day, but certainly one old Quaker State gas station and a bunch of muscle cars, by turning the abandoned station into the Quaker Steak & Lube, a "Cook Your Own Steak" restaurant. They gave the cars, which included a 1936 Chevrolet, frozen in time on the original hydraulic grease rack, a loving home. The concept was so successful that Jig and Moe were able to hire a cook so their customers no longer had to do their own cooking and the menu was expanded to include a variety of family friendly foods, including chicken wings.
It is from these beginnings that the Quaker Steak & Lube family of restaurants began. Today, "The Lube" serves over 30 million wings annually, has 16 bottled sauces for retail sale, has won the title of "Best Wings USA," and has over 100 local, national, and international awards for their sauce recipes. With 12 current locations in four states, "The Lube" is still rescuing muscle cars, vintage cars, trucks and a vast selection of custom and antique motorcycles, giving them good homes hanging from the walls and ceilings in each restaurant.
I suggest you read the Old Testament. That's not so much a morality play against genocide... as a manual for it. The Nazis were well aware of this and played off it when it suited their purposes.
> Depends whether the "involvement" was truly voluntary or not.
Was the guy SS (I think he'd have to be to be a death camp guard)? I believe the SS was a voluntary organization.
> I'd really like to know what the consequences were for low-level Nazi soldiers who refused to carry out their assigned duties as concentration camp guards
I *believe* I've read about such guards, and how they were mroe or less just re-assigned somewhere else.
The military engineers who were responsible for Hitler's ability to remain in power, were protecting the continued operation of the death camps just as surely as the low-level guards were. Difference was, the engineers got to enjoy much more pleasant surroundings while they followed THEIR orders.
It may come as a surprise to you, but Hitler not only persecuted Jews, his Nazi regime also actively restricted other organized religions. (Hitler and Christianity). Instead, he sought to subvert and eradicate Judeo-Christian beliefs and morality by substituting a fabricated, paganistic cult based on ancient Teutonic myths.
Good chain of wing and burger joints in PA, OH areas. Just ate at one on my recent vacation back in SW PA. Wish we had some out here in the Soviet of Washington. Good wings!
I don't pretend to be an expert on Nazi compliance techniques. I do know, however, that most of the organizations used by totalitarian regimes to impose their will have been officially "voluntary". But there were plenty of severe consequences for not "volunteering" when asked, and for un-volunteering. Refusing to participate in the local branch of the Communist Party in the old Soviet Union was a quick ticket to losing your government-provided home and your government-provided job -- in a country where no one other than the government could legally provide you with a home or a job.
Brothers of an unnamed college fraternity in Boston travelled to Sharon, Massachusetts and stole the sign saying Now Entering Sharon and put it up in their frat-house. I saw it there.
Small fry? A camp guard? One of the ones who shoved people into ovens or herded them into "shower rooms"? Gee Willie, will you be calling Osama's boys small frys too some day in the near future?
"...at what point do you stop and let the small-fry go?"
When chasing old men down stops being a career for some government bureaucrats, evidently.
I don't think that's possible.
They'll never reach age 79 if they keep blowing themselves up before they're even 18.
No one moved for a long time. Then suddenly a little old woman runs up, picks up a stone and throws it at the man, hitting him in the temple, killing him.
Jesus slowly walks up to the lady, looks at the dead man, than back to the lady, then says, "Ya know Mom, sometimes you really piss me off".
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