New Nazi cases on 'Demjanjuk principle'.

[panzerplatten]

Article from today's local .de
http://m.thelocal.de/national/20120820-44473.html
Regards Mark.

[texas88]

Just read the story on Fox News website.The story I read said they werent releasing the name of the subject yet.But it seems that he is not being accused of any specific incident but that he was a guard at Auschwitz therefore he must be a war criminal.Sad.What if he made ham sandwhiches in the canteen, should he be charged as a war criminal for making lousy food?

[history1]

[...] but that he was a guard at Auschwitz therefore he must be a war criminal.Sad.What if he made ham sandwhiches in the canteen, should he be charged as a war criminal for making lousy food?

It´s not of importance what he personaly did in the camp. He belonged to the camp guards and that´s what counts.
BTW, at the post-war Nuremberg Trials the Waffen-SS was condemned as a criminal organization due to its essential connection to the Nazi Party and involvement in war crimes.

[heimwehr danzig]

The judgement of a million strong force as (excepting conscripts) entirely criminal is beyond ludicrous, and shows a kind of kangaroo court thinking that has nothing to do with justice. It is sad that even after 60+ years some have still not moved on from this thinking.

There is nobody left alive who made any meaningful contribution to the operation of Auschwitz, but those "nazi hunter" types do have to justify their continued existence somehow I suppose... :roll:

[David Thompson]

history1 wrote:

BTW, at the post-war Nuremberg Trials the Waffen-SS was condemned as a criminal organization due to its essential connection to the Nazi Party and involvement in war crimes.

and heimwehr danzig replied:

The judgement of a million strong force as (excepting conscripts) entirely criminal is beyond ludicrous, and shows a kind of kangaroo court thinking that has nothing to do with justice.

We have a number of open threads on the subject of the Waffen-SS as a criminal organization, among them:

IMT Judgment on the Waffen-SS at
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=46013

pp 7-8 of:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=14506

p.1 of:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=32847

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=30087 and

Judgment on the SS as a Criminal Organization
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=15476

Criminal organizations and the IMT
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=147426

It does not appear to me that the "Demjanjuk Principle" we're discussing here has much to do with that judgment. There is a lengthy discussion of accessory liability in the "Suspected Nazi guard charged over 430,000 deaths" thread, beginning with a post from Andy H. at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 7#p1491987.

[wm]

Just read the story on Fox News website.The story I read said they werent releasing the name of the subject yet.But it seems that he is not being accused of any specific incident but that he was a guard at Auschwitz therefore he must be a war criminal.Sad.What if he made ham sandwhiches in the canteen, should he be charged as a war criminal for making lousy food?

Prisoners were doing that work there. I think you will have a hard time to find an example of non-criminal job in Auschwitz...

[Kajtmaz]

tagesspiegel

Johann B. …Philadelphia…
...Nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges lebte Johann B. einige Jahre in Bayern, bevor er 1952 in die USA auswanderte.
Weil seine Mutter Amerikanerin war, konnte ihm die US-Staatsbürgerschaft später nicht entzogen werden …

Secret Justice Department Report: OSI, pp.175-191

Breyer, Johann

Born: 1925, Czechoslovakia

Alleged Persecutory Activity: Service as guard at Buchenwald concentration camp and Auschwitz Death Camp.

Obtained US visa 1952.
Became US citizen 7 Nov 1957.
OSI moved to revoke citizenship 21 Apr 1992.
Shortly thereafter Breyer began administrative proceedings to establish derivative citizenship because his mother had been born in the U.S.
(Breyer's mother was born in the United States, immigrated to Czechoslovakia as a teenager, and married a Czech national.)
The court ruled in Breyer's favor and that decision was affirmed on appeal.
He was therefore able to remain in the U.S.
Breyer v. Meissner, 2002 WL 31086985 (E.D. Pa. 2002), affirmed, 350 F.3d 327 (3-rd Cir.2003)

[Kajtmaz]

http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F ... -4226.html

The government seeks to strip Johann Breyer of his United States citizenship for serving in the Waffen SS during World War II.
At issue is whether Breyer, who joined at age seventeen, was a voluntary member of the Nazi military unit.

The District Court found that he was not,
and consequently issued a declaratory judgment that Breyer was a United States citizen. We will affirm...

[michael mills]

The "Tagesspiegel" report on the Johann Breyer case contains a gross historical error, as follows:

Wenn er jedoch auch Wachmann im Vernichtungslager Auschwitz-Birkenau war – und davon sind die Ermittler überzeugt –, dann hat er zwangsläufig beim Massenmord an den europäischen Juden mitgemacht. Denn eine Arbeitsteilung gab es unter den Wachleuten in Auschwitz nicht, die verschiedenen Dienste wurden rotierend von allen geleistet, und wenn die Deportationszüge ankamen, mussten ohnehin alle SS-Männer mithelfen.

The historical fact is that at all concentration camps there was a clear distinction between the camp staff, who were under the command of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, and the guard companies, who were members of various Waffen-SS formations who had been seconded for guard duty at camps, usually because of unfitness for frontline duty.

The members of the guard companies were housed outside the concentration camps at which they served, and were not even authorised to enter the camps. Their function was to man the camp perimeter, ie to guard the gates and stand in the watchtowers, and also to escort groups of prisoners who left the camp grounds on labour assignments. Thus, members of the guard companies never came in close contact with prisoners.

The claim made in the passage quoted above that members of the guard companies took part in the reception of incoming transports of prisoners is entirely false. The reception of incoming transports, including the selection of the new arrivals for labour or death, was carried out solely by members of the camp staff.

The great majority of the several thousand SS-men who served at Auschwitz at one time or another were members of the guard company, personnel of Waffen-SS formations who had been transferred from the front to the guard companies and often were transferred back to the front. Thus, the majority of those thousands of Auschwitz personnel never came in contact with prisoners, never took part in selections, let alone in gassings, never got close enough to prisoners to do them harm. The only harm a member of a guard company could do to prisoners was to shoot from a watchtower at a prisoner trying to escape, hardly a criminal act, given that all concentration camps were institutions created by the German Government and hence legal entitites entitled to take appropriate action against attempted escapes.

[Kajtmaz]

2009, Spiegel, Prosecutors Not Just Targeting Demjanjuk
04-2009

John Demjanjuk is not an isolated case…
[…]
Johann Breyer, 83, was born in Slovakia and lives in Philadelphia today. The son of a Volksdeutsche man and an American woman has admitted that he worked as a guard at the Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration camps.

[Kajtmaz]

Closing of 'Demjanjuk principle'.
.

[Kajtmaz]

26.09.2012

Der in den USA lebende ehemalige SS-Wachmann Johann B. soll in Deutschland vor Gericht gestellt werden. Der 87-Jährige wird aber wohl nicht ausgeliefert und angeklagt.

[Kajtmaz]

27.09.2012

It is unclear whether new evidence has emerged, but some observers say that German investigators could be renewing their efforts based on a precedent set in a case against John Demjanjuk, who was suspected of committing mass murder, and at one point was thought to be "Ivan the Terrible."
[...]
Marcia Sachs Littell, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey, …described Breyer's claim not to have taken part in killings as likely being denial.

Apropos “new evidence” already is fixed.

http://cdn1.spiegel.de/images/image-405 ... 9-psle.jpg

[michael mills]

Some information from this site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-Totenkopfverb%C3%A4nde

Within the camps themselves, there existed a hierarchy of camp titles and positions which were unique only to the camp service. Each camp was commanded by a Kommandant, sometimes referred to as Lagerkommandant, who was assisted by a camp adjutant and command staff. The prison barracks within the camp were supervised by a Rapportführer who was responsible for daily roll call and the camp daily schedule. The individual prisoner barracks were overseen by junior SS-NCOs called Blockführer who, in turn had one to two squads of SS soldiers responsible for overseeing the prisoners. Within extermination camps, the Blockführer was in charge of the Sonderkommando and was also the person who would physically gas victims in the camp gas chambers.

The camp perimeter and watch towers were overseen by a separate formation called the Guard Battalion, or the Wachbattalion. The guard battalion commander was responsible for providing watch bills to man guard towers and oversaw security patrols outside the camp. The battalion was organized on typical military lines with companies, platoons, and squads. The battalion commander was subordinate directly to the camp commander.

As stated, the Wachbataillon (also called Wachsturmbann) at a camp was separate from the SS-TV staff who served inside the camp and controlled the prisoners. The members of the Wachbataillon manned watchtowers and patrolled the camp perimeter; they did not go inside the camp itself.

Breyer claims to have been a member of the Wachbataillon at KL-Auschwitz, and never to have seen the inside of Auschwitz-II where the gassings took place. If indeed he was a member of the Wachbataillon and not of the camp staff, then his claim is entirely credible.

If a "Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies" states that Breyer's claim of not having taken part in killings is "denial", then that person is either displaying an ignorance of the history of KL-Auschwitz incompatible with her academic position, or else is deliberately distorting historical truth. The plain historical fact is that the great majority of the several thousand men who served at KL-Auschwitz were members of the Wachbataillon, and never participated in selections or actual gassings, which activities were reserved for a small number of trusted personnel.

The difference between the actual camp staff and the Wachbataillon is clearly explained in the book "Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp" published by the USHMM, in Chapter 10, "Hisotrical-Sociological Profile of the Auschwitz SS', by Alexander Lasik.

[Kajtmaz]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/01/g ... -italians/

After a 10-year investigation, the court in the southwestern German city of Stuttgart said ...
[...]
“In fact, for every individual person accused, it must be established that — and in what way — he was involved in the massacre,” added the court.