Posted on 02/16/2008 4:59:25 PM PST by SJackson
A convicted Nazi war criminal arrived in Italy yesterday to start a life sentence imposed in his absence for the murder and torture of prisoners in the final year of the Second World War.
Michael Seifert, 83, a Ukraine-born Canadian citizen dubbed the "Beast of Bolzano", has lived in Canada since 1951. He had been fighting extradition for eight years.
The former SS corporal was a guard at a prison camp in Bolzano, northern Italy - used as a transit point for Jews, Italian resistance fighters and others - in 1944 and 1945. An Italian military tribunal convicted him in absentia in 2000 of torturing and killing at least 17 people while working at the camp.
Court papers said Seifert had tortured his victims with fire, broken bottles, clubs and freezing water.
In one instance, he had raped a pregnant woman detained in an isolation cell before killing her. In another case, he had left a 15-year-old Jewish prisoner to die of hunger.
advertisementCanada's supreme court refused last month to hear his appeal against extradition. His lawyers argued that he had been convicted unfairly and that Canadian officials were biased against him in allowing the extradition.
Yesterday, Seifert stepped off a plane at Rome's Ciampino airport before dawn and walked slowly with the aid of a cane as police escorted him away.
And many many others who make this guy look like an amateur. Don't give me any more of the BS about nazi war criminals while we're rolling out a red carpet for the Communist killers!
I'm conflicted about that. It is easy being an armchair quarterback and saying "this is what we should have done..."
But the truth of the matter is many countries lost millions of lives and had entire cities demolished. We were just sick and tired of violence and wanted no more of it.
Stalin recognized this and we condemned millions of people to 50 more years of communist occupation...
I’m not being an armchair quarterback. I’m praising the generals who wanted to go after the Communists, which is nothing more than having an opinion. As for those who opposed the idea, I don’t begrudge them their decision. Like you said, people were tired of violence and their decision was perfectly understandable. It was the same thing that started WWII in the first place - people remembered the horrors of WWI and were reluctant to get into another war, until Hitler showed the world they had no choice.
When the Virginia Tech shooting happened, there were a lot of REAL armchair quarterbacks boasting about how they would have been some type of John Wayne superhero if they had been there. I wasn’t one of them. Don’t lump me in with them.
You see, one of my hobbies is reading about WW2 and the Civil War.
And I have books that show the pictures of incredible violence and disasters that occurred. Death, wanton destruction, hatred and sadness.
And I can look at these pictures and wonder what the survivors are thinking as they look upon the battle field. And I can imagine how sick and tired the Americans were of war in 1945 after the Japanese surrendered.
If we went after USSR, we would be alone. You see, none of the Europeans were willing to fight anymore after defeating the Germans. They lost their homes, families and pretty much everything.
In short, pushing the USSR back was never going to happen...
What kind of a fair trial did this guy get? He is really no longer a threat, in any case. Locking him up probably is no deterence, because there aren’t and Nzi regimes around anymore. There are dictatorships, but most are communistic, and so think that they are the wave of the future, and thus don’t have to worry about being caught. If there are any that are worried, trying this guy (if you can say he got a trial at all) only would make other dictators afraid to leave power peacefully, for fear that once out of power, they will be hounded for their past misdeeds, which are generally much worse than what this guy supposedly did.
Meanwhile, John McCain does not want us to run a mere trickle of water into the nostrils of a terrorist for a few seconds, even if it can save thousands of lives.
And the ACLU would not have us handle any of the captured terrorists except by givening them all the trial rights of ordinary citizens and residents. It is crazy.
The whole problem of rights for combatants was created by own collaboration with the communists, during and after WWII. We all wanted so badly to try Nazis for “war crimes.” But what “war crimes?” The holocaust was mainly against civilians, and therefore should have been tried in ordinary courts like murder cases. But that wouldn’t do. We had to get some of the leaders, even though some of them had nothing to do with mass murder. We thus executed people who in some cases were just propagandists or youth leaders (like Baldur von Schirach, who apparently never killed a flea). We tried to execute even an economist whom the Nazis themselves had imprisoned!
And what about the “war crimes?” The German army probably had no higher frequency of war crimes than did its opponents. They were certainly no worst that their former allies, the Soviets. But the Soviets wanted to get them. So did the Italian commies, who also had fought the German Army as “partisans.” Before the war, it was considered a war crime to fight out of uniform. It was rightly against the laws of war, because it blurred the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Yet the Soviets and their agents (like most of the French “underground” and many Italian groups) were just such partisans. So after the war, the international rules were changed. It is now considered perfectly all right to shoot at uniformed soldiers while pretending to be a peasant or other civilian, and if you are caught and hanged, it is the soldiers who are called the “war criminals,” — and German soldiers were treated that way after the war, by an ex post facto logic.
Now spin up to today. See the problem we are in? Under the old rules, we should be able to shoot anyone who ambushes or attempts otherwise to kill our troops, and certainly any terrorist wantonly killing civilians. But we can’t, thanks to having legitimized terrorism retroactively after WWII. Another mighty achievement for liberalism!
Although we are thus inhibited from defending ourselves and our friends, our enemies bomb civilians by the hundreds at a time, and murder those trying to establish a peaceful life in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, or elsewhere; and the Right Watch groups focus on the cruelty of our holding prisoner some of the evil-doers in Guantanamo.
By all the rules of war, we should be able to hold those terrorists, try them in a military hearing, and execute any who are convicted. The others can be held until the end of the conflict — which may be in 200 years, or when hell freezes over, and pigs fly. The laws of war says that enemy combatants are freed at the end of the war.
I think we should dig up the dead communists, hang them and throw the remains in a land fill or just in the nearest ditch. The ones we catch that are still alive should get the same.
“We were just sick and tired of violence and wanted no more of it.”
Do you think WWII or WWI ever ended?
There were 15 million Ukrainians, Germans, and other groups that were murdered from 1921 to 1939.
And when did WWII end ? I recall Korean War, Viet Nam , and a gazillion dollars spent because we didnt give Patton the last two nukes to give to Russians instead of making them wait till 1949.
its very clear that communist china and quasi communist russia are still capable of committing genocide.
Good! And let the Holocaust deniers whine all they want. Once in a while we get some justice, and this is one of those times. All those morons complaining about it can go cry themselves to sleep. Justice won the day this time. Right is right, wrong is wrong, up is up and down is down. Anyone who doesn’t like that can go pound rocks. It’ll be good practice for the career path they’ve chosen for their next life.
It's revenge stupid - don't you get it? /s
I’m sure the Germans killed 80 yr olds. He can handle it. If not, he can handle the alternative.
Try Nazi war criminals and execute them no matter what their age is. No statute of limitations for the most evil crimes of history, no matter what modern day snivelling liberals might say.
“Try Nazi war criminals and execute them no matter what their age is.”
Yes, but who is protecting Leftist genocidists? And why has not one been prosecuted in this country.
So pursue them. That would make sense. But this campaign to prevent the prosecution of Nazi war criminals just makes you look bad.
Don't know, he was tried in Italy. I'd presume he got a fair trial. In absentia, per his choice.
What do you advocate as a statute of limitation for murder?
Is the USA wrong for not adopting one?
Mass murder, should the statute be shorter or longer?
If you're opposed to "rights" for combatants, you should support this development. Personally, I think terrorists should be held liable for their actions, as should their sponsors. Murdering civilians isn't a military action.
This thread might interest you, Victims of Palestinian terror ask US not to hinder their cases [State Dept takes terrorists side].
Though it's within the power of the government to charge terrorists for murdering Americans, we don't. And the administration appears to be considering stepping in on the side of the terrorists when they're held financially responsible.
My opinion only, but Imad Mugniyah should have been under a death sentence in the US decades ago for his actions bombing our Marine barracks and Embassy in Beirut. Even Argentina got around to charging the Iranians who masterminded the Jewish Community Center bombing. We sit on our hands.
“So pursue them.”
Let me try this again and I’ll type real slow:
With every Nazi prosecuted, there is ANOTHER failure to prosecute the FIRST COMMUNIST genocidist.
IT IS THIS COUNTRYS DE FACTO POLICY TO PROTECT communist genocidists and this is WRONG!
And you appear to have no problem with this - so what are you doing here?
Prosecuting Nazi war criminals does not prevent other prosecutions. That’s just stupid. There are all kinds of crimes committed all over the world all the time. None of them excuse the crimes that you think should be forgiven. Communists are not the only criminals in the world. Crimes committed by communists do not negate all other crimes.
Try to understand what this thread is about. It’s not about you, or your pet peeve du jour. It’s not about somebody else’s crimes. Nobody else’s crimes cancel this out. No matter how you try to spin it, or what excuse you come up with, a very good thing happens whenever one of these bastards is brought to justice.
“or your pet peeve du jour”
For you to call the genocide of 100 million in the last century a “pet peeve” reveals that you are a genocide denier.
Shame!
And for you to accept the failure to prosecute makes you a notch below complicit.
What are you doing here?
I was referring your pet peeve, which is the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. It’s not my fault that it peeves you. It’s not my fault you refuse recognsize the seriousness and evilness of the Nazi Holocaust. It’s not my fault you only object to genocide when it’s somebody you’re not siding with committing the crime. It’s wrong no matter who does it. It was even wrong when your idols did it. I’m glad to see them prosecuted, and I’m glad to see you have an emotional meltdown over it.
Sometimes when I post from my Blackberry characters redner as ASCII.
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