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On May 13 2009 12:45 zatic wrote:
HamerD why even bring up the iccup stats of you granddad? Unless he was a torturer at a concentration camp in Burma (yeah, you had those too) there no point in bringing that up.
It was relevant to railxp's point.
- Demjanjuk was not a soldier
- What he did were not war crimes
- The holocaust and the death camps were NOT war crimes
The comparisons to any act of war just do not apply.
The death camps were murder. Call them crimes against humanity if you want but they were not war crimes. If John Doe of Utah shoots his neighbor then this is murder, not a war crime, even though the US is currently at war. How is this concept so hard to understand?
It's very complicated to me, at least. The death camps were 'government run', weren't they? There was a chain of command that let to, who, Goebbles or Goerring? It's not as simple as mr John Doe there. If John Doe gets a letter from the government saying 'HEY THERE! We got a bunch of native americans rounded up in this here pen, wanna come and torture them?! For uncle Sam?!' and he goes along and does it, I really don't think he should be blamed for doing it. He's allowed to do it! It's the fault of the government for allowing him to do it!
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let this decrepit old man live the rest of his short life and start prosecuting israeli army thugs for war crimes in gaza
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Zurich15365 Posts
Alright I agree I am guilty of making over the top comparisons myself there. Still, you need to get off the idea that crimes commited by non military state agancies during war time are automatically war crimes.
During the Nuremberg trials the notion of crimes against humanity was specifially introduced for people like Demnjanjuk or the many civilian holocaust organizers and executers outsite of the Wehrmacht that could not be charged with war crimes.
HamerD: So, following your logic, the one and only responsible person for all war crimes, the holocaust, and crimes against humanity was Hitler himself? Everybody else can't be blamed because they were allowed to do what they did? The Nuremberg trials and all subsequent Nazi trials were thus not justified?
Hitler WAS the state. His idea of Fuehrerprinzip meant everybody except him had someone responsible above him that would take the blame according to your understanding of responsibility.
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I'm also guessing everyone in this thread suggesting to be lenient towards Demjanjuk has a wrong idea about the german legal system. A conviction doesn't mean that he's going to be punished like in the US.
Paragraph 2 of the "Strafvollzugsgesetzbuch" states: "Im Vollzug der Freiheitsstrafe soll der Gefangene fähig werden, künftig in sozialer Verantwortung ein Leben ohne Straftaten zu führen (Vollzugsziel). Der Vollzug der Freiheitsstrafe dient auch dem Schutz der Allgemeinheit vor weiteren Straftaten." http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stvollzg/__2.html
This states that the goal of imprisonment is to enable the prisoner to lead a responsible life without further crimes. The secondary goal is protecting the general public. Also, imprisonment is the harshest possible outcome of a trial, there's no death penalty in Germany. 
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This makes me remember a thing from the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". Benjamin says: You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went, you can curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.
Don't know if I agree or not, just something that popped up in my head.
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torture is the only way forward
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the big problem is that so many people discussing this particular case have very little knowledge about what they are actually talking about..
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk
He was thought to be "Ivan the Terrible" a very cruel guard I think in Treblinka.
On April 18, 1988, the court found Demjanjuk guilty of all charges. One week later it sentenced him to death by hanging.[15] Demjanjuk was placed in solitary confinement during the appeals process.[16]
The Israeli court later released him in a VERY arguable decision, because they weren't positive if there wasn't an identification confusion (sounds hard to believe since many eye witnesses identified him).
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On May 13 2009 01:17 {88}iNcontroL wrote:
I love how people are saying that if someone "held a gun to your head" your aren't responsible for what they make you do.. yet I am being called the romantic when I say "even if someone holds a gun to your head you to some degree will be held responsible for what you do."
lol @ him ending up being a fucking brute who volunteered. MMmmmm sweet victory.
Preface: I assume the majority of this post is addressed to me. I asserted that you are not a realist. However, I am not arguing whether or not the defendant is innocent or not. I am simply responding that any claims that you are a realist, or that you hold a related realist view, is contradictory to your other views. By the way, I do not support either of those two statements in your above post.
The use of the phrase "being held responsible" is a clever way of clouding the fact that you are reverting to a certain standard of morality to determine whether or not someone should be judged innocent or guilty based on your moral code. Both statements above refer to a certain moral code which one believes should be applied to every case. This fact leads me to why I asserted that you are not a realist in the first place: your morality and perceived view of justice. The post below deals with your view of justice:
+ Show Spoiler +On May 12 2009 09:50 {88}iNcontroL wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2009 09:45 Last Romantic wrote:
Mildly ridiculous. Even if he were guilty, this is simply accelerating the process of natural death by what? a decade, at the absolute upper limit?
To think of the massive costs of flying him around and providing medical care for him and the legal representation of both sides... it's simply not worth it for one damn prison guard. You are looking at this from a purely capitalistic point of view. Put yourself in the perspective of a person who lost out on having a pair of grandparents.. or an entire lineage of family because of men like this man who obeyed orders to contain these people in a little pocket of hell on earth. This man was supposed to face justice a long time ago. He didn't.. but as they say "It is better late than never."
You clearly reject the views of a realist for the sake of "justice." Your ideal of justice being served and "it is better late than never" is nothing more than a romanticized way of thinking. It is purely based on your subjective morality (assuming that you believe that your morality is subjective) which you believe should be implemented based on romanticized views.
Therefore, given that you have romantic ideals, when is it okay to cherry-pick realist arguments when the arguments in question are integrally tied to your romanticized arguments?
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On May 13 2009 06:01 Carnac wrote:Show nested quote +On May 13 2009 05:29 LaughingTulkas wrote:
I guess even if he was guilty of being a prison guard, I would be in favor of showing mercy. Is another death or another person in prison really the best way to atone for the horrible crimes of the holocaust? I don't think it's going to help ease any of the pain, or make anyone feel better. Sure maybe he deserves it, but there is pity, and there is mercy, and these are virtues sorely lacking today. He's an old man and he (perhaps) has lived his life with the memory of the things that he has done. He seems all used up to me, and even if he were guilty of those terrible crimes, yet mercy would seem to be a better course. Another punishment is not going to do anything.
Maybe a quote would be better:
"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement." ~Gandalf
Death does not atone for death, and wounds are not healed in revenge. Forgiveness and mercy can bring healing, and justice should sometimes be tempered with mercy. This man is not a danger to society (if he was it would be different) and I see little harm and much good in letting him live the rest of his life without this trial. Is a Lord of the Rings quote what you would recite in front of the survivors of the concentration camps to make a point? From a legal point of view there isn't even room for debate here, because under German law the following 4 crimes have no statute of limitation: murder, genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes (and personally I think this is a good thing). But up to this point we don't even know if there will even be a trial, whether or not he is fit to be put to trial is still to be determined. And more importantly there is no capital punishment in Germany. I'm undecided whether I think he should be in prison, but I don't see why he shouldn't be put to trial.
I guess I shouldn't have expected any better on the internet, but the quote was not an integral part of the argument, merely an example of some wise advice, perhaps it would have been better to put Tolkein as the source. No, I wouldn't say it to holocaust survivors, I didn't know any were in the audience hereI didn't think people would just take the opportunity to ridicule and belittle the point without rebutting it. But it was a funny joke, and I should have known better, so no foul.
But the point was that punishment doesn't bring healing, and sometimes mercy and forgiveness are the better course, especially when the man is no longer a danger to anyone.
To put it another way, are you going to take an old, unhealthy, disheveled man before holocaust survivors and say "We're pretty sure this guy was one of the ones who hurt you, so we're going to incarcerate him for the rest of his short life. Now we are closer to having justice."
Such a thought would be ludicrous. Anything we could do is merely a drop in an infinite chasm in the face of the great pain that the holocaust wrought on those people. I would wager that many if not most of the actual survivors aren't too interested in late retribution.
Legally, I'm sure you're right, but just because someone can be prosecuted does not always mean they will be.
edit: spelling/typo
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I don't think it's right for us to judge someone for complicated events that happened 60-something years ago. The only question is whether he is a danger to anyone or not.
Has he lived his post-years peacefully? I am sure he has been haunted by his past during the last 60 years.
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On May 13 2009 16:55 zatic wrote:
HamerD: So, following your logic, the one and only responsible person for all war crimes, the holocaust, and crimes against humanity was Hitler himself? Everybody else can't be blamed because they were allowed to do what they did?
absolutely not... but you can't convict thousands for the decisions of the few. soldiers are trained to be soldiers. they take orders. they do their jobs. that is what makes them soldiers.
not to say it is right... but to be a soldier is not right. but it is the way our civilization works so far.
it's really a double standard, is the job of soldiers to take orders or to make their own decisions? would our leaders want soldiers to just take orders, or to make their own decisions?
+ Show Spoiler +
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Zurich15365 Posts
On May 14 2009 13:43 travis wrote:Show nested quote +On May 13 2009 16:55 zatic wrote:
HamerD: So, following your logic, the one and only responsible person for all war crimes, the holocaust, and crimes against humanity was Hitler himself? Everybody else can't be blamed because they were allowed to do what they did? absolutely not... but you can't convict thousands for the decisions of the few. soldiers are trained to be soldiers. they take orders. they do their jobs. that is what makes them soldiers. [...] + Show Spoiler +
Read the thread first please. He was not a soldier.
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I think the S.S. were clearly soldiers. If you don't, fine. I'm not here to argue semantics. Replace the word soldier in my post with the word "guard" and my point still stands.
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Zurich15365 Posts
Yeah see that is where the difference is. As a guard, he was told to shoot on people that tried to escape or resist. While in my opinion that does not excuse murder, it is not even what he is prosecuted for.
As concentration camp guards they were told that they would not be prosecuted for anything that happened within the camp. That was it, there was no order to indescriminatly murder or torture prisoners. Which is however exaclty what he and the other guards, especially the Eastern SS mercenaries, did. They absolutely had the choice to "just follow orders", which again in my opinion would be bad enough, or to go beyond that.
Btw, for anyone who is interested in the actual proceedings: The judge said yesterday they will of course consider that the guards acted under orders from the SS officers where applicable.
Regarding the evidence:
The US authorities that investigated the case for over 30 years have compiled almost 100 binders full of evidence. Among the evidence there are original documents such as Demjanujk's SS prison guard ID card from death camp Sorbibor. As previously mentioned in the thread the evidence was enough for an Israeli court to sentence him to death.
Another former prison guard testified against Demjanuk too, saying that he was among the worst savages in the camp, randomly torturing and murdering weak prisoners.
A survivor from death camp Sorbibor also testified, saying that the extermination in the camp could have never run as efficiently without the Ukrainian guards. He also cited the guards as being especially cruel. They would hunt their naked victims with bayonets into the gas chambers. He also said he remembered only one single guard that was not a savage and just did his duties as a guard withour unessaccery cruelty.
I just want you to get off the idea that he a) was a soldier b) just followed orders. He was a savage that tortured and murdered because he liked to torture and murder.
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does germany go with "innocent until proven guilty" ?
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On May 13 2009 14:29 {88}iNcontroL wrote:
David you are responding to something from 8 pages ago or something?
Did every american soldier aid in genocide? No. Is this a special situation? Obviously.
War isn't pretty. What the Nazis did was something special.
The Nazis or the few SS officials in charge of the camps?
also i guess you are up for the capital punishment for israeli soldiers that are doing what the SS did.
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Zurich15365 Posts
On May 14 2009 17:30 LaSt)ChAnCe wrote:
does germany go with "innocent until proven guilty" ?
Yes, that's why we have this trial.
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On May 14 2009 17:45 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2009 17:30 LaSt)ChAnCe wrote:
does germany go with "innocent until proven guilty" ? Yes, that's why we have this trial.
if he's innocent until proven guilty, aren't you jumping the gun saying things such as
"I just want you to get off the idea that he a) was a soldier b) just followed orders. He was a savage that tortured and murdered because he liked to torture and murder."
since none of this has been proven yet, else he would already have been convicted, right?
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Zurich15365 Posts
On May 14 2009 17:48 LaSt)ChAnCe wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2009 17:45 zatic wrote:On May 14 2009 17:30 LaSt)ChAnCe wrote:
does germany go with "innocent until proven guilty" ? Yes, that's why we have this trial. if he's innocent until proven guilty, aren't you jumping the gun saying things such as "I just want you to get off the idea that he a) was a soldier b) just followed orders. He was a savage that tortured and murdered because he liked to torture and murder." since none of this has been proven yet, else he would already have been convicted, right?
I am not a judge. He is innocent before the law, not in my eyes.
Also, he has been found guilty previously and sentenced to death in Isreal, but had to be released due to mistakes that had been made in the prosecution, namely the US authorities were holding back information from his defenders.
I am absolutely advocating a fair trial. I also realize that he might go free from this as well since I bet the German code of procedure is stricter than the Israeli one.
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EPT
