When ALL of these small-fry can live knowing every guilty murder is dead or locked up.
Nazi war criminals should still be hunted down and prosecuted,
but at what point do you stop and let the small-fry go?
When the last small-fry has died, I think.
When you can't get any headlines out of it.
Camp guards aren't small fry, IMNHO.
Do you think the Nazis released a few unimportant people, because they "let the small fry go"?
Everyone they rounded up, disappeared into the camps. There were few exceptions - maybe the ones who died en route, or jumped the trains when they were strafed by Allied fighters.
They've evaded capture for too long.
When ALL of these small-fry can live knowing every guilty murder is dead or locked up.
If this man did what is alleged, then why isn't he tried for "war crimes"? Is there a statute of limitations on mass murder? If he only was in a flunky position, like a lowly lieutenant and did not realize what he was doing was against the Geneva Convention until after the war, then I think he should have the opportunity to run for president of the United States. (/sarcasm)
I don't see the consistency problem here -- membership in the Nazi party alone does not make anyone a war criminal. But anyone involved with the concentration/extermination camps is a different matter entirely.
As long as he did not put panties on any of the inmates head, I think he should be forgiven.
I think the difficulty is in defining "small fry".
> 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.
Wow. This guy is *STUPID*. He's actually morally equating people who took notes at a wind tunnel or sat at drafting tables with someone who guarded death camps?
Quaker Steak and Lube restaurant?
I doubt the guy had much of a choice back then. Think about it - what would have happened to him had he developed some sort of moral dilemma and decided "Hey, this Nazi thing just ain't for me"?
I suspect we wouldn't be worrying about what to do with him today, now would we?
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?
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.
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".
Never. His being a Nazi SS guard disqualifies him as a "small fry".