New Nazi cases on 'Demjanjuk principle'.

[tomalbright]

Question to all researchers...what is Breyer's personnel record and profile, if available..this might be tough, since he was most likely a 17-18 year draftee into the Waffen SS. My hunch is he was in the Auschwitz Guard Btn. and had a peripheral role, if any, in direct war crimes. The NY Times article also mentioned he served the Buchenwald guard unit and entered the SS at age 17. The charge implicates him in the murder of over 200,000 plus people. This seems more than a stretch for a guy on the periphery of the camp. His greatest crime most likely was a knowledge of what went on in the camps; passive complicity. If they can prove direct criminal activity, with witnesses, fine. This has a political smell too it IMHO.. I work for DOJ and US Marshals, I know the politics that are at work in DC these days....

[Paul Lantos]

Everyone knew what was going on in the camps. Everyone in the community knew, all the Jews who weren't killed found out within a couple days of arrival, and the former SS who were honest admitted that the exterminations were a criminal act. Hoess said so, and Franz Stangl said that he and Herman Michel had agreed that the exterminations were criminal.

This individual had said he 'might have fired his gun in the air a few times' while on guard duty. If there is a 'between the lines' to this (aside from the obvious self-exculpation), this means that in his role he was interacting with prisoners who needed some sort of discipline / attention using a firearm. Do we really believe that he didn't shoot or beat people? I'm sure some SS guards never killed anyone -- but these were probably the ones who never fired in the air either. He also escorted work convoys outside the camp. Do we really think he was taking them out for picnics? The brutality in these work details was famous.

[history1]

There´s a lot of assumption in your post, Paul. And you´re writing as you would have witnessed this all.

[Skyderick]

Innocent until proven guilty. It's a shame most witnesses had died before he was tried.

Part of the testimony of Pnina Katz (Klein), born in Sevlus in 1925.
http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Micro ... %20500.pdf

Q: I'd like you to describe this journey during which you claim you saw Demjanjuk. You are being evacuated from Grodno and move by foot. Are only Ukrainians guarding you?
A: Yes.
Q: There are no German SS men?
A: There were none. We saw him during the death march.
Q: What was his rank?
A: He was an officer, not a high officer. He was in command of the SS. I did not know his name was Demjanjuk. I only knew it was Iwan.
Q: That's what you heard? That his name was Iwan?
A: No, a Ukrainian SS man told me. I asked him: Walk by my side, otherwise he'll shoot me. So he won't put a bullet in me, walk by my side! I begged him. It was nearly the end. I said: This German will shoot me. He said: That's no German, he's a Ukrainian, one of ours, his name is Iwan. Then I knew he was a Ukrainian, their commander. He came with a motorcycle. He was there every time, I can't remember.. in Landsberg, near Landsberg. He said he was there during his trial. Salzburg or Landsberg, he said he was there. And we walked around. He came every time.
Q: When he came, what did he do? Did he arrive on the motorcycle every time?
A: He came on the motorcycle.
Q: Was he the driver of the motorcycle?
A: Yes, he was alone on the motorcycle. He stood at the side and shot us. It was his hobby.
Q: He stood and shot you girls just like that?
A: Yes.
Q: Did he do this with speech, gestures?
A: No, only with laughter.


http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Micro ... 206264.pdf

[wm]

For those preferring blanket punishment:

In the Gusen concentration camp a kapo was trying to kill a prisoner by forcing him into the forbidden zone. But the nearest guard, sitting on a high stool didn't react - it seemed he was too far from the place. So the kapo entered the zone pushing the prisoner with a long stick toward the guard.
The guard raised the gun to his shoulder and killed the kapo with two well aimed shots. The prisoner escaped unharmed.

In the Auschwitz concentration camp there were guards who abused the prisoners verbally and physically - when their superiors were present. If not they turned a blind eye to the local people bringing food for the prisoners. If caught those guards would pay dearly for that.

In the same camp, among the duties of one of the SS doctors there was to approve corporal punishment administered on the prisoners, it sometimes meant death. He always wrote "incapacity for punishment" on those documents ending the procedure immediately.

The dreaded Pawiak Gestapo prison was responsible for about forty thousand deaths.
A high ranking SS doctor working there made life of the prison authorities so difficult by strictly enforcing the German health rules (enormously benefiting the medical personnel - made of prisoners, and the prisoners) he was sent to the Eastern Front as punishment - and was killed there.
Another was brought in his place, the problem was he was as do-gooder as his predecessor - the rules stayed the same.

[tomalbright]

Circumspect posts, all. An SS guard was guilty buy association with a criminal organization that willingly performed criminal acts. However, his individual guilt in directly performing these acts is open to debate. Eugen Kogon mentioned that most wartime guards were passive in the performance of their duties and rarely used their weapons, only when ordered to do so. The personnel pool for the guard units by 1943 was not that of the pre-war SS-TV, who were schooled and well-motivated in the evils of the "enemy behind the wire". The guilt of this individual should be based on his actions against prisoners as evidenced by witnesses, etc. His position itself put him on an "outer circle of hell". Any block or detail leader in the camp hierarchy was in a far different position as well as administrative or medical staff; their guilt should be treated in a different manner, judged by different criteria. The greatest level of guilt en masse for the guards was during the death march evacuations in early 1945. If Beyer was part of that, then his guilt is manifest IMHO. At this point. his prosecution is a waste of time and money.

[Paul Lantos]

An SS guard was guilty buy association with a criminal organization that willingly performed criminal acts.

He was an SS guard at an extermination camp, he wasn't a guard at some office building. Just the act of guarding people who were summarily imprisoned without any due process was criminal. He also admitted being a guard for labor convoys -- slave labor convoys.

most wartime guards were passive in the performance of their duties and rarely used their weapons

But human rights trials do not necessarily require individual acts of violence when one is a knowing part of a criminal infrastructure. I'm sure Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hans Frank, and Alfred Rosenberg never shot anyone during the war, but they were undoubtedly guilty war criminals.

At this point. his prosecution is a waste of time and money.

His imprisonment probably would be. Legal documentation of his guilt is a different matter. If there is no statute of limitations on murder, then why should there be on war crimes?

[little grey rabbit]

Do we really believe that he didn't shoot or beat people?

To be honest I haven't a clue and I don't care. I do wonder when he stopped beating his wife though.

[wenty]

I'm all for prosecuting war criminals, but why now, 70 or 80 years after the fact? It's simply because most of the major criminals have well and truly passed on and so now, the hunters are looking for the small fish. In the majority of cases I don't really understand the point - all it does it reopen old wounds for the victims and their families involved, and at the ripe old age these veterans are now, they'll probably die before court cases against them reach an outcome, and even if they don't, it's very difficult to imprison them.

If they were meant to be brought to justice, it should have been done decades ago along with everybody else. It's not as if these people have been hiding away like Eichmann or Mengele.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Paul Lantos]

but why now, 70 or 80 years after the fact?

According to the law of the land at least in the United States, there is no statute of limitations on prosecution for murder. If you killed someone 80 years ago, you can be prosecuted today.

No one seems to have any problem with that -- so why do people have a problem with prosecuting someone who was an accessory to the murder of thousands of people?

all it does it reopen old wounds for the victims

Someone who has been through that always lives their old wounds no matter what. My grandmother just turned 88 and she says there isn't a day in which she isn't thinking about what she endured and whom she lost. You really think this is some sort of psychological trauma that would otherwise be healed over if not for finding another perpetrator?

If they were meant to be brought to justice, it should have been done decades ago along with everybody else.

Had they only been successfully identified and caught in many cases.

It's not as if these people have been hiding away like Eichmann or Mengele.

What does that matter? Should someone be granted freedom from prosecution just because they didn't move to South America?

Incidentally, if we leave aside Mengele's medical work and focus on his bigger crime (participating in selections of newly arrived transports at Birkenau), how is he any more of a criminal than the perimeter guards at the camp? After all, the SS workers at the gas chambers claimed they were not responsible either -- it was the political division of the Katowice gestapo that technically approved "special measures" for people in the gas chambers, and it was a small subset of SS who physically threw in the gas. So Mengele didn't gas anyone himself.

The point is that everyone has a self-exculpatory excuse. But the only way a single barbed wire enclosure can gas a million people is if there is a system in place. Being a perimeter guard at an extermination camp is an accessory role in the murders that took place there, and I don't see this as mitigating his guilt at all.

[little grey rabbit]

Paul Lantos says that everyone must have known Auschwitz was an extermination camp, however Auschwitz - in contrast to Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor - covered many square kilometers any included legitimate prisoners (ie POWs and people who had been judged in a criminal process) as well as conscripted labor who were employed in working towards the war effort including the manufacture of munitions, coal mining and oil substitutes. It seems entirely possible that someone could be employed at Auschwitz and not be aware of the exterminations (something I am not yet convinced of myself). Indeed an entire volume of affidavits was presented at the IG Farben trial by those who claimed to have worked for IG Farben and not been aware of the gas chambers.

And then the Red Cross visited in September 1944 who heard only from the British POWs who had heard only the vaguest rumors of a very modern bathhouse that was actually a gas chamber, but had completely failed to obtain any confirmation of this by asking Jews in their various work details.

so why do people have a problem with prosecuting someone who was an accessory to the murder of thousands of people?

The biggest problem would be that if you accuse someone of being an accessory, that implies there was a legitimate authority to which he could have successfully laid information before. But as I understand it there was no such authority. Why stop with a guard who may have worked any where in the Auschwitz network of camps? Surely the railway employees of the time are equal accessories? Police in the cities of origin? Post offices who carried communications that coordinated the arrangements? Clearly all bear culpability in terms of standing by and doing nothing - or even actively assisting in acts which in themselves were not obviously criminal but were essential to the (alleged) crime taking place, but that is not generally considered grounds for criminal prosecution. So why in the absence of any positive evidence of any specific act is this former guard considered guilty simply because he might have been somewhere within 20 kilometers of the gas chambers?

As Mr Lantos may recall, I consider it very likely that HIV virus and released under the aegis of the Special Virus Cancer Program of the 1960s and 1970s. Using his logic who would also be an accessory in the resulting deaths? Everyone received a grant from this program on the grounds they must have all heard the rumour? Everyone who worked as a research assistant, technician or graduate student?
In a spirit of mischief I made a veiled allusion to the SVPC and cancer researcher Robert Weinberg on the comments section of Retraction Watch in regards to a series of papers that had been shown to contain inappropriate manipulation of images. It was so veiled and obscure that only someone who was aware of the backstory would pick it up. The comment was blocked and a visibly nervous Ivan Oransky sent me an email demanding clarification. Should he also be liable to prosecution?
What about me - I know yet I make no effort to contact police or any other authority. Just like our nameless 17 year old SS recruit, I believe the people responsible are essentially untouchable and that there is no authority that can act on this issue. 40 years down the tract should I expect to see myself in court charged as an accessory?
Mr Lantos might like to consider the fact that if everyone got their just deserts, who would 'scape the whipping?

[AmYisroelChai]

The victims of industrialized mass murder, atrocities, slave labor, forced migrations, bizarre medical experiments, cultural and religious genocide and maltreatment and starvation of POWs, as practiced in the nazi occupation zones during WW2 by nazi SS units, national fascist police, death & concentration camp guards and other criminals, require JUSTICE. No amount of rationalizing how many camp guards can stay on the head of a pin, and other excuses for criminal behavior by the perps of atrocities can alleviate the basic human requirement for justice, without any statute of limitations. Too much time has passed? The camp guard killers are small fry? They are old? They are infirm? Every excuse to let them off the hook of justice. And why such energy to make excuses for them? I think we know why...

[Paul Lantos]

It's hard to know how to respond to such a lurid outpouring of slippery slope, extrapolations, and streams of consciousness. I didn't say or imply any more than the content of my post. That said, what a non-Jewish POW in Auschwitz I knew about gassings in Birkenau is irrelevant. The guards at Birkenau knew, much of the community around the camp knew, and much of the world knew, so don't pretend it was some sort of secret. A Birkenau camp guard was part of the necessary architecture of extermination. As for your HIV theories, you can go file them in your flat earth drawer alongside your Area 51 alien landing.

[wenty]

Hi all,

Paul:

Perhaps you, along with AMC, should take a deep breath and read my post again.
I'm all for prosecuting war criminals - they used their positions of power as a means kill and torture, mentally and physically, those under their control. That is not limited to World War II.

However, it is now 2014. World War II ended 69 years ago. That means that, at the very youngest, these "war criminals" are approaching 90 years of age. Should that make them immune to prosecution? Absolutely not.

But, as I said, they have not been hiding, and their presence at sites where war crimes were committed, to the best of my knowledge, has not been disputed. So why wait so long to finally make a move to prosecute them?

I'll tell you why. Because there's very much a feeling of "Well we've either caught all the big fish or they're dead, so let's see what small time players we can find and prosecute them as well."

This idea of prosecuting people just because they've lived long enough to outlive their counterparts who actually did commit some serious war crimes, is not the way the justice system should be operated.

You say that the old wounds never heal, and that is probably the case. But it can't help if a 90 year old victim is required to come to court and relive 70 year old memories of what so-and-so did to them in a concentration camp, can it?

These people have children, grandchildren, great-grandchilden. Communities. It affects far more people than just the alleged criminal. You may wish to see everybody who ever wore a Nazi uniform spend their last days in jail, but to me it just doesn't seem like something which is going to achieve any long term good.

LGR:

What you said.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Paul Lantos]

Because there's very much a feeling of "Well we've either caught all the big fish or they're dead, so let's see what small time players we can find and prosecute them as well."

This idea of prosecuting people just because they've lived long enough to outlive their counterparts...

Do you have even a shred of evidence that either of these points is true, or is it just cynicism?

But it can't help if a 90 year old victim is required to come to court and relive 70 year old memories of what so-and-so did to them in a concentration camp, can it?

I don't know how many survivors you know. I can tell you how many I know. First, you cannot generalize about what will help or harm them, because their psychological and emotional coping skills are VERY diverse. So from the start, you can toss out any generalization about them because there will always be exceptions. Secondly, there are some people for whom it's a catharsis to talk about this. This was absolutely 100% the case for two of my grandparents. This was the diametrical opposite for my other two grandparents and for some other relatives, who would never talk about it even if asked. Also, some survivors are more preoccupied with legal justice than others -- which is why certain survivors testified at many post-war trials whereas others refused. So can it help the 90 year old victim who is called to testify? Yes, because only people who want to testify would end up going anyway. Not that this is so relevant anyway, I'm not sure survivor testimony would be at all needed for prosecution of this particular guard unless the survivor were a direct witness to his actions. That was the fallacy of the Eichmann prosecution, making the trial a big lurid show-and-tell instead of just sticking to the case.