Posted on 04/15/2009 12:35:23 PM PDT by nickcarraway
German Investigators Tracking Others Not Just Recently Arrested John Demjanjuk
John Demjanjuk is not an isolated case. German investigators have set their sights on other presumed Nazi war criminals, raising the question of how the law should deal with the aged accessories of the Holocaust.
When he had completed the job, SS Colonel Karl Jäger, filled with pride, wrote in his report to his superiors: "Today, I am proud to report that the objective of solving the Jewish problem for Lithuania has been achieved by Task Force 3. There are no longer any Jews in Lithuania ..."
It was Dec. 1, 1941, and German troops had occupied Lithuania, which was part of the Soviet Union, since the summer. According to Colonel Jäger's meticulous account, his subordinates had killed exactly 47,326 men, 55,556 women and 34,464 children.
But Jäger did not claim all the credit for himself and the 120 men he commanded. He was only able to achieve his goal, the ardent Hitler supporter wrote, because one of his subordinates had managed to "secure the cooperation of the Lithuanian partisans."
The "partisans" Jäger referred to were anti-communist militia units that had once fought against the Soviet occupation and had now become the willing helpers of their new, German masters. One such incident of voluntary collaboration took place on August 15 and 16, 1941, in Rokiskis, a town in northeastern Lithuania, where 80 Lithuanians rounded up Jews, brought them to an execution site and helped lock up the victims. Twenty of the Lithuanian volunteers joined Jäger's men in shooting them dead.
Rokiskis was only one of many such places. The Holocaust was a crime ordered and committed by Germans, but without the help of Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, ethnic Germans living in Eastern
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
When do they try all the Stazi and members of the GDRgovernment?
In principle, I fully support running every last nazi down and seeing justice done, but I can’t help but suspect this effort is not so much about pursuing justice as it about enhancing some person or party’s political future.
The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and Red China under Mao slaughtered many millions more people than the Nazis. When will there be an international manhunt to round up all their camp guards and exectioners?
i agree the manhunt should stop now. just a question what will all those Nazi hunters do in 10 years? Ýes the nazis did horible things (so did others but i don´t want to play this down). True (btw. i´m austrian) but it´s more about it ended in 1945 and now we have 2009. i mean how many people are left who could have been into a position to commit this crimes? it should stop now.
Is that Obama on the left, helping to carry the chair?
How about the NKVD personnel who slaughtered the Poles at Katyn and other places. If I remember correctly, a single NKVD executioner murdered 2,000 plus Poles at Katyn one at a time, in batches of 250 a night.
And I think Stalin and his boys killed more people in Ukraine than Einsatzgruppn ‘C’, ‘D’ and all the police regiments and Gestapo personnel combined.
In principle, I fully support running every last nazi down and seeing justice done, but I can’t help but suspect this effort is not so much about pursuing justice as it about enhancing some person or party’s political future.
I agree that it is not fair to round up brutal ex-nazis, while ignoring brutal ex-communists.
However, one wrong doesn’t justify two.
In America at least, I don’t know about Austria, there is no statute of limitation for murder.
I don’t care how old the murderers are, or how long ago the Nazis ruled—they still should be prosecuted...as long as they are still breathing.
Austria—home of Hitler and most of the SS—has a reputation around the world of having avoided blame for the Nazi Holocaust—and having been since soft on ex-Nazis. Kurt Waldheim and Jurig Heider come to mind...as well as the current day mainstream bigot, Klaus “I wouldn’t want the Western world to be directed by a black man,” Emmerich.
Anyone with a remote connection to the Nazis nationally or otherwise should be the last one to say “enough” for those still alive.
Reparations in perpetuity? No. But punish murderers still alive—even if Russia, China and other countries ignore their own Communist butchers.
But this guy has been vetted, nothing conclusive was discovered.
Instead, his prosecution has become a personal cause for someone in a position of power. That should worry all of us.
Assuming Demjanjuk was a camp guard, the man is 89 years old, senile, and in poor health. He was not the camp kommandant or even an SS officer. Yes, I favor bringing high level international war criminals to justice like Adolf Eichmann. But Demjanjuk was a low level camp guard.
GGG
In America at least, I don’t know about Austria, there is no statute of limitation for murder...
Related:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1833916/posts
11-nation commission agrees to start transferring Nazi archive to Holocaust researchers
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1799017/posts
Long-Secret Archive of Nazi War Records to be Opened
http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=354611&Category=24&subCategoryID=
Copies of Nazi archives to be released to Holocaust institutions after 50 years under wraps
Excerpt:
Copies of documents from a secretive Nazi archive, locked away in a quiet German town for more than 50 years, will be released to Holocaust institutions within a few months under an agreement reached Tuesday.
The documents will give historians an intimate view of the systematic slaughter of millions during the Holocaust, and will let survivors and victims’ families search for their own histories — as recorded by their tormentors.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1841722/posts
Israel to publish first list of Holocaust victims’ assets
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1850701/posts
Russia declassifies military archives dating back to 1941-1945
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1850727/posts
Second World War MI5 documents revealed
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1869992/posts
The Genocide Generals: secret recordings explode the myth they knew nothing about the Holocaust
How many of these guys can even still be alive? These people would be in their mid 80’s-90’s today.
I’ve visited Austria three times, and the people were kind, and it’s a beautiful country, with an incredibly rich culture and history. My cousin married an Austrian, and they live in Vienna. I saw the Klimpt paintings there, before they were awarded back to the heir in California.
It is true though, because of the the Cold War and the closeness of the Soviet block, after WWII, Austria was portrayed as a victim, rather than a willing participant in the National Socialism of the 3rd Reich.
Yes, Waldheim had been a Nazi officer—something he hid before and after becoming UN Sec. General—he fooled Austria and the world.
And I believe you, Heider was not a Nazi, but was a bigot...like the current day Klaus Emmerich. I cannot imagine any other country in the West where such persons would have mainstream credibility. The USA had David Duke—but he was locked out of the Republican party—and laughed into obscurity.
Numerous public figures made one slip (like Radio shock-jock Don Imus, in calling black athletes “nappy haired”) and were immediately banished...by public pressure...from normal discourse. Is that all good? No...it’s gone overboard in the USA too, but still, we are coming straight with our past.
Germany may have gone overboard with, as you say, “never ending blame” but this has given them credibility—that they don’t tolerate racist bigots (be they actually Nazi or not).
I’m sorry, Austria has not, in my opinion, shouldered enough of the blame...and hence, has less credibility than Germany—or other western countries, with the effects of racism in its past.
I know you and the current generation had absolutely nothing to do with Nazism..., however, again, the public perception is that Austria as a country has not come fully clean from that dark period of history.
And the clear perception in the USA is now Europe is becoming very anti-Semitic all over again (largely due to your large Muslim immigrant population).
“He volunteered for the SS at time when the mass murders were well known to the locals.”
Just remember, this guy is Ukrainian, I believe, not German. He was in the Russian Army and was captured. A prisoner of war. I don’t think he had any choice if he wanted to live. I doubt that he was a willing volunteer for the SS. It was a case of “volunteer or go to the death camps yourself.” He spent something like 7 years in solitary confinement in Israel, before being freed. He should not have come to this country, but he was completely uneducated, and not too intelligent. He was refused entry into the Russian Army the first time he applied, because he didn’t have a change of underwear or socks, and had borrowed his brother’s shoes. Desperately poor. I don’t think he made many real choices in his life. Just tried to stay alive. Again, he shouldn’t have come here in the first place, but he’s so old, and so feeble,,,, I say just let him die here. I’m not some sort of a supporter, but, how many other guards, who stood in a watch tower, or trudged around the perimeter in the snow, have been charged as being complicit in 29,000 murders? I think somebody, some organization , just wants publicity.
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