Really, Germany?

[CapnAwesome]

What you said is totally untrue historically. People didn't randomly end up working in the death camps, they wanted to be there. Most were members of the SS who joined the SS out of their own free will.

OK, I don't want to pretend to know more than I do, but something isn't adding up for your characterization of of those whose job title was "medical orderly". In our culture, this is not what ambitious people do, and the SS was Germany's most elite military organization during WWII. Therefore, I'm surprised if they could get any SS soldiers to empty bedpans, when they could get the local population, which was no less hostile toward Jewish people than they are today. But if you say the SS did even that low detail, I know you are qualified with your degree.

I'm not a world war two expert, I don't think I took a single class on it, so take what I say with a grain of salt. However we didn't go after every single german nazi for prosecution so I'm going to assume there is a good basis behind it. Normally there has been. The case made in the article is very incomplete. It doesn't say how he got the job, so we are left to speculate. However I find it unlikely that he was an innocent victim of the nazi regime forced to do this. People were forced to go fight the Russians in the front lines. Also I doubt he was just changing bed pans, as he is changed to accessory to murder.

We are also left to speculate about his current mental state. His defense claims dementia and that's all the information that article gives, but what defense wouldn't with a 95 year old client. I think someone who escaped justice for decades and decades would be willing to fake dementia to escape for a little bit longer. We just don't really know because of the incomplete information presented.

Edit: Reading a separate article that does confirm he was part of the SS.

[Minimalist]

Yeah, Cap'n....

However we didn't go after every single german nazi for prosecution so I'm going to assume there is a good basis behind it.

Best not to delve too deeply into it.


http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/wernher-von-braun/101/

In the closing days of the war, von Braun and a group of his rocket scientists surrendered to American forces. Although he had been a member of the German SS and had used slave labor at Mittelwerk, the Nazi underground rocket facility, von Braun and his colleagues were embraced by the United States government and began working for the Army on rocket technology. In 1960, von Braun became the first director of NASA’s new Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

It's not a pretty picture.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I don't know, they still were party to it, and even in the states there is no statute of limitations on murder. Now if they simply were not planning it and simply followed out of fear, that would be a better case. But yea, seems to lack pragmatism. I am sure it would be a harder case to make to a German Jew to say "Hey they are too old to do that to them" if you are a German Jew who survived or had family you know died. But add the Dementia in yea, seems pointless.

Having said that I do hate Israeli Jews milking the Holocaust to justify land grabs. As insightful as Ann Frank was, I doubt she would agree with everything modern Israel does.

If the Nazis were so intent on eliminating the Jews why were there so many survivors?  Why did they bother building concentration camps and stocking them?  Heck, the US kept people in concentration camps three years after the war ended.

[Alex K]

If the Nazis were so intent on eliminating the Jews why were there so many survivors?

Oh just fuck off

[Wyrd of Gawd]

If the Nazis were so intent on eliminating the Jews why were there so many survivors?

Oh just fuck off

Can't answer the question, can you?

[Alex K]

Oh just fuck off

Can't answer the question, can you?

I don't have enough time on my hands to take the showers I'd need after actually engaging in that discussion with you.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Can't answer the question, can you?

I don't have enough time on my hands to take the showers I'd need after actually engaging in that discussion with you.

You can always take a nap in your oven when you get stressed out.  Maybe one day you will think about the question.

[Alex K]

I'll just be glad I don't have to live in your head, and leave it at that.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I'll just be glad I don't have to live in your head, and leave it at that.

Are there any fairy tales that you don't believe in?

[Alex K]

I'll just be glad I don't have to live in your head, and leave it at that.

Are there any fairy tales that you don't believe in?

You make me lose my faith in humanity, does that count?