• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Fugitive Nazis

Xanatic* said:
aold aven if Germany drops the charges, that Holzmann Amendment will likely mean he can't return.

I saw someone else is also being tried now, despite having only been 15 years old at the time.
Click to expand...
I can understand bringing to justice people who were actively involved in the holocaust, but it seems to me these cases sre just a case of 'lets find a nazi and try them for war crimes', Friedrich Karl Berger was a 19 year old unarmed prison guard for a short time (according to reports). Im not familiar with the case of the 15 year old so i cant comment, but at 15 it seem unlikely they were a war criminal.
BTW i come from a Jewish family so bringing to justice those involved in the holocaust is close to my heart.
 
I believe the 15 year old was working as a secretary at a camp.
 
Xanatic* said:
I believe the 15 year old was working as a secretary at a camp.
Click to expand...
See this is what i mean about trying to prosecute anyone who ever had anything to do with any prison camp or concentration camp, whether they were actively involved in war crimes or not, im sure they will be looking for the poor guy that shovelled coal into the engine of the trains that transported the prisoners to the camps next.
 
Some comments to set the context and hopefully stop further clueless speculation ...

The news of the secretary's case was posted 2 weeks ago in this thread. Check that post and do some homework to see the details.

As far as legalities, the controlling authorities for deciding who is indictable for war crimes are the German courts. The criteria used to categorize camp employees as either complicit or not are complicated. Personnel employed in the dedicated extermination camps are essentially presumed complicit in war crimes by definition. Personnel employed in other (e.g., work) camps require formal judgment at a finer-grained level of scrutiny.

The legal motivation for pursuing these two (and other) long-delayed cases traces back to the German courts.

As to Berger's specific case ...

When Berger entered the USA in 1959 he declared (truthfully) he'd worked for the German Navy during the war. As far as I can determine it appears he omitted mention of the fact he'd been assigned to the concentration camp for 3 months in early 1945. He was one of the guards who oversaw the forced march of prisoners to Lubeck, where they were confined aboard 3 (?) civilian ships in the harbor along with prisoners brought in from other camps. The vast majority (thousands) of these prisoners died in Lubeck harbor when the RAF mistakenly attacked and sank the ships.

The sunken ships were eventually raised or scrapped within a few years. At some point Nazi records evacuated to, and stored upon, the ships were salvaged. Among these records was an index card documenting Berger's assignment to - and employment at - the concentration camp.

For whatever reason(s) it apparently took decades for researchers / Nazi hunters to connect the dots between the salvaged index card and Berger. I can't find any details on when and how this happened. Once that connection was made Berger became a legal target for the German courts to scrutinize.

There was nothing legally amiss with Berger's 1959 entry into the USA. However, under the 1978 Holzmann Amendment he became subject to deportation on the basis of his connection to the concentration camp and the German courts' associated designation of him as a person of interest in war crimes proceedings.

This matter didn't suddenly surface this year. His final appeal in US courts was denied back in early 2020. I can't find any clues as to how long he'd been embroiled in legal proceedings prior to that.
 
Age is no issue ... A German court has set a trial date for a man accused of having been an SS guard at a concentration camp. He's 100 years old.
German court sets trial date for former Nazi guard, aged 100

A German court has set a trial date for a 100-year-old man who is charged with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he served as a Nazi SS guard at a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin during World War II.

A spokeswoman for the Neuruppin state court said Monday that the trial is set to begin in early October. The centenarian’s name wasn’t released in line with German privacy laws.

The suspect is alleged to have worked at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1942 and 1945 as an enlisted member of the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing.

Authorities say that despite his advanced age, the suspect is considered fit enough to stand trial ...
Click to expand...
FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/europe-trials-courts-c66303df37edc81f19a1ae5069789bd4
 
96 year old accused of being the secretary at a death camp flees court.

"A former secretary at a Nazi concentration camp has been captured after trying to flee before her trial in northern Germany.

Irmgard Furchner, 96, was due to stand trial for complicity in 11,000 murders, but she failed to turn up and the judge issued a warrant for her arrest.

The defendant was detained by police hours after disappearing from a nursing home in the town of Quickborn.

She had fled to Hamburg where she was reportedly seen on a local street.

Irmgard Furchner had been due to appear at a special juvenile court in Itzehoe, an hour's drive north of Hamburg. Instead she went to an underground station and travelled to the outskirts of Hamburg."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58747082

Artists (my) impression of how the arrest went down.

21793082-7753977-image-m-35_1575436374978.jpg

7A4CAEC5-07B2-0FBA-7366D3B60B95D4F0.jpg
 
Can't be doing with this. These people are too old. It's time we moved on. Not forget, but move on. None of them were in charge, none of them were in a position of power in the hierarchy, and any one of them, had they refused orders, would have risked not only their own lives but the lives of their families. They would have been indoctrinated in hate for most of their lives.

And it's utter hypocrisy given the Germans and Japanese we didn't prosecute because they were useful.
 
Cochise said:
Can't be doing with this. These people are too old. It's time we moved on. Not forget, but move on. None of them were in charge, none of them were in a position of power in the hierarchy, and any one of them, had they refused orders, would have risked not only their own lives but the lives of their families. They would have been indoctrinated in hate for most of their lives.

And it's utter hypocrisy given the Germans and Japanese we didn't prosecute because they were useful.
Click to expand...

Nazis who played a senor role in the regime ended up as Cabinet Ministers, MPs, State Ministers, generals, industrialists after WW2. Going after the little people now is certainly hypocritical.

I have no truck with the Red Army Faction but it's worth noting the backgrounds of two of their victims.

Hanns Martin Schleyer who was killed by the Red Army Faction in 1977 was President of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations and the Federation of German Industries. Before WW2 he was a nazi student leader, he went to be an SS officer and supervised slave labour in Bohemia. He was never prosecuted for this.

Siegfried Buback also killed in 1977 was Germany's Attorney General. He had been a Nazi Party member.

The (ex) nazis were well ensconced in power in 1970s Germany.
 
Jaguar: Spain, 1962, a lone wolf holocaust survivor intent on killing the ex-SS officer who murdered her father is persuaded to play the longer game by a team of nazi hunters. Their target is a more senior nazi, Dr Aribert Heimt a real life character who was known as the Butcher of Mauthausen. This is a fictional series but it is inspired by the reality hat 40,000 nazis settled in Spain after WW2, protected by the Francoist regime, most of hem didn't even change their surnames. There are flashbacks to what happened in the camps during the war, how the team got together. Very much an action series but one tempered by the reality the necessity of surveillance and security. Also the team each have their personal demons that they have to deal with. Not just survivors guilt but also some had to do in order to live through the Holocaust. Some great shootouts and hand to hand fighting, even dark humour. Created by Ramón Campos and Gema R. Neira. On netflix 8/10.

This article gives more historical context to the series.

Netflix’s new series on Spanish Nazi hunters: Separating fact from fiction​

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netfl...sh-nazi-hunters-separating-fact-from-fiction/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top