Former SS officer tried for murder

[Marcus]

A 93-year-old former Nazi SS officer has gone on trial in the German city of Hamburg, charged with ordering the murder of 59 Italian prisoners-of-war in 1944.
Branded the "Butcher of Genoa" by the Italian media, Friedrich Engel is accused of taking a bloody revenge for an attack on a cinema for German soldiers.
Last year he expressed regret for having had a role in the killings, but said he was only carrying out orders.
Mr Engel, who denies the charge of murder, is expected to give evidence during the trial.
The killings, in the Turino Pass, took place on 19 May 1944.
The victims were forced to stand in groups of six on a plank over a rough grave dug by Jewish prisoners.
They were shot, and were buried where they fell.
...
Mr Engel was in 1944 the leader of the elite SS force in the port city of Genoa.
An Italian court has already sentenced him in absentia to life imprisonment for killing at least 246 Italian prisoners.
It said he bore responsibility for four separate massacres committed in the final two years of the war.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/ ... 972389.stm

[AndyW]

"Angelo Nero" (this is the nickname they gave SS-Obersturmbannführer and Chief of the SD in Genua Friedrich Engel) turned out to be the "very nice old gentlemen" (a neighbor) living in Hamburg for many years.

It's a very good principle that mass murderers shall not feel save until they take their last breath.

And Justice for all...

[Starinov]

"And justice for all" as you say so well

[Keith Loughmiller]

that every German is rounded up and put on trial, yet no Russians ever stand trial for the mass murders they commited while serving the Smersh, NKVD, KGB, ect. WHY??????

[Dan]

If the man truely committed muder, he should be punished. The fact that many of the Russians and Jews and Englishmen and the rest got away with murder doesn't absolve German criminals.

Don't worry, they will all be punished. Even Stalin and Hitler, who's multi-layered programs superimposed upon a biological matrix seemingly got away with it will face the music.

[AndyW]

Interesting enough:

If the jury decides on manslaugher, he will be a free man and might get a compensation from the taxpayer if he had spends a night in jail.

If the jury decides on "normal" murder, he's a free man, too.

Only if the jury founds out that the murder was done out of "lower reasons" with "special gruesomeness", he'll face life prison.

Cheers,

[Roberto]

that every German is rounded up and put on trial, yet no Russians ever stand trial for the mass murders they commited while serving the Smersh, NKVD, KGB, ect. WHY??????

A question also asked by Solshenizyn in The Gulag Archipelago. Why do the Germans face up to their past and thus gradually become free of it but we don't, he wonders. That was in the early 1970's, when the Soviet Union was riding high. Yet little seems to have changed to this day.

[Schmauser]

A court in Estonia has found a former Soviet secret police official guilty of ordering the deportations of more than twenty families. The man -- Johannes Klaassepp -- was given an eight-year suspended prison sentence for issuing deportation orders as an official of the NKVD secret service -- a precursor of the KGB. Correspondents say Mr Klaassepp, who is seventy-eight, is the first person in Estonia to be convicted of crimes against humanity committed in the Stalinist era.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/ ... 261041.stm

~Regards Schmauser

[michael mills]

A court in Estonia has found a former Soviet secret police official guilty of ordering the deportations of more than twenty families. The man -- Johannes Klaassepp -- was given an eight-year suspended prison sentence for issuing deportation orders as an official of the NKVD secret service -- a precursor of the KGB. Correspondents say Mr Klaassepp, who is seventy-eight, is the first person in Estonia to be convicted of crimes against humanity committed in the Stalinist era.

It is just that what this man did was judged to be criminal act, and that he was found guilty of it. It is also just that the punishment was so light, and that he was not treated as a scapegoat on which revenge could be taken for the wrongs inflicted on the Latvian people 62 years ago.

Obviously the Latvian people are not so obsessed with revenge as Italian leftists and certain Jewish organisations.

Or is it that the Latvian Government fears that if it gave a severe sentence to someone who victimised Latvians rather than Jews, it would incur the wrath of the Jewish Lobby in the United States?

[Keith Loughmiller]

The Latvians have their own plan as for "payback" to the Russians. 1 example is the law passed this last Sept. If you don't speak Latvian, you don't hold a job. I know people who had been employed for over 15 years were out of work overnight. Because they were Russian and could not speak Latvian. The Latvians have not forgotten, and will not forget what was done to them. They are attempting to join NATO, so they are treading very carefully.

[Kurt_Steiner]

It is curious that so many Nazi criminals were "very nice old gentlemen" once the war was over. Their victims would also be nice old people, had they survived, of course.