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On May 12 2011 21:41 Morfildur wrote:
This doesn't mean that i think what he/they possibly did was not bad, it was... but 70 years is a lot of time (Just so you can compare it: In 70 years Boxer will be 100 (and probably look a lot more like the true emperor)).
§78 II StGB: Verbrechen nach § 211 (Mord) verjähren nicht.
(§78 II penal code: Felonies as per §211 (Murder) do not prescribe.)
On May 12 2011 22:48 chaokel wrote:
Prison is meant to be a correctional facility (or removing dangerous individuals from society), its not about punishment for crimes.
Punishment Purposes
There are several theories around about this matter.
the "absolute Retribution/Atonement-theory."
As per this perception punishment is free (->"absolutus") of all social purposes and functions repressive into the past.
The punishment acts as the requital for the commited crimes and also as guilt compensation.
(see Kant's Island-example).
Contrary to those theories stand the
"Relative Penaltheories."
They constitute that the punishment has a preventative aspect as to prevent future crimes.
(tl,dr:
-punishment as deterrence of the community from committing crimes ->negative generalprevention
-punishment as to conserve the public belief in the non-appealability and assertiveness pf the legal system -> positive generalprevention)
What you described was the facet of the "Relative Spezialprevention"
But as you can see even the academics couldn't rightfully as of yet agree to what punishment exactly means.
It is supposed to be for all of that if you ask me.
None of the above Punishment-theories is very convincing if you concentrate solely on it.
But you will get nearer to the truth if you combine them:
Combined Retributiontheory
-> Punishment is a repressive Illtreatment that shall bring fair guilt compensation.
This is the actual theory that is used by the german jurisdiction for the understanding of Punishment.
Combined Preventivetheory
Favorite of the professional german literature.
Describes more or less the things you said.
Point of this €dit was to show that there is more than just one comprehension of punishment and that you can argue very well for a Prisontime-judgement as a fair form for guilt compensation.
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On May 12 2011 23:06 Reborn8u wrote:
Even if he was a guard at a death camp, he was a soldier following orders. I'm pretty sure no one would volunteer for such a horrible duty. A soldier following orders is not the same as murder or being a party to it. It is a horrible thing that this happened, but I doubt this man is personally responsible for it. He probably would have been put in prison himself or executed, for treason or dereliction of duty had he not followed his orders, and not only himself but his family probably would have suffered if he refused. The Nazi party ruled in large part through fear. I know I'm (almost literally) playing devils advocate. But this just doesn't seem right.
We hung Saddam Hussein for gassing the Kurds of Iraq in the 80's, he was in charge so he is responsible, he had a CHOICE not to. I don't think anyone can prove that a soldier, like this former Nazi, really had a choice in what went on.
Well 10% escaped, so what it's about right now if he actually could've escaped easely, as he afterall had permission to walk freely, or if he was forced to stay.
Still he was probably like what... 20 years old at the time? He was probably all in for following orders, and was probably proud to serve in the army with all the propaganda that was going on.
I don't think he would've made the same choice today, which is enough to let him go imho.
I think Germany's doing this to show that they're trying to make up for what happened, and that every trace of their past history during ww2 is being dealt with, but honestly is this the right thing to do?
By the way, didn't you hang Saddam Hussein because he had WMDs? *cough*
Edit: I just wanted to add that the influence of following authorites was alot higher back in the early 1940s. You did what you were told, and didn't think more of it basically. This was the general 'opinion' I guess, whereas today people think alot more freely.
Also most people were extremely proud to be in the military (there was several suicides by people who weren't allowed to get in).
The parents of European WW2 soldiers had often been in WW1, and often pushed their sons into battle, and returning dishonorably wasn't an option.
Even if this man had a possibility to escape, he might simply not even have thought of it as an option.
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Zurich15326 Posts
On May 12 2011 23:06 Reborn8u wrote:
Even if he was a guard at a death camp, he was a soldier following orders. I'm pretty sure no one would volunteer for such a horrible duty. A soldier following orders is not the same as murder or being a party to it.
Well first of all (also to the guy above): He was not a soldier.
And of course that was what the court had to rule on. The argument was that the gravity of the crime he was ordered to do was so great that he should have been committed to take the risk of fleeing. Again, many of the other guards did.
It's a very difficult case and not nearly as simple as "he was just following orders" vs "he was a cruel and committed murderer". I don't envy any judge who has to rule on this.
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It was the SS that guarded the concentration camps and did the rounding up of the "undesirables", you had to volunteer to join the SS and it's likely people knew what this would entail so "I was only following orders" really isn't a valid excuse. If you joined the Wehrmacht, as most Germans did, then you were far less likely to be a party to war crimes. This guy was Ukrainian however, I know the SS recruited a lot of people from the occupied countries and I'm not sure how easy it was to join the regular German military as a foreigner, so he may not have had much choice in the matter.
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Just now, I read a news report that the judge ordered him released. The five year prison sentence will not be enforced because of his age and keeping in mind that he already was jailed for two years while the trial was under way.
I have no English link, only German: http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/0,1518,762080,00.html
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If he has been found guilty, he should be punished, regardless of age.
For what it's worth, I think Germany has been the most serious in sorting out its past crimes of all the countries in the world. National socialistic atrocities committed before and during the second world war have been among the worst of mankind, due to their scope as well as their immorality. Due to their scope, there are many, many guilty people, who share their guilt not evenly distributed; some have only closed train doors, or sold barbed wire, while others have pulled triggers, or operated gas chambers. It is not an easy task to figure out who has to be held responsible for what, or in what degree, especially as the entire industry of destruction (by which I do not mean the army, although it did play a part in it) systematized not only the killing of people, but also the dilution and evasion of guilt. For example, in destruction camps, some of the most gruesome tasks fell to prisoners, who by aiding in the destruction of their fellow prisoners bought an extension of their own lives, thus relieving (?) the camp guards and nazi officials of some part of the direct guilt of single-handedly ending lives. Such mechanisms existed on every level of the hierarchy, and as the nazi party and its components were organized in a strict army-like fashion, it could be (and erroneously has been) argued, that only one man bore sole responsibility for the millions of murders and other heinous deeds. This is an evident lie.
The real sticky wicket is, determining who has to be held responsible for what part of the Shoa, which is most difficult. If the courts have found this man guilty, he should be punished. If only one more of the great many who have escaped punishment is brought to justice after all these years, it will serve as a further reminder, that crimes have consequences.
If anyone is interested in the German treatment of its second world war past, start with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergangenheitsbewältigung
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On May 12 2011 22:41 A_Bandersnatch wrote:
Yes he won't be killed, but is it fair for him to die in prison?
He helped killing 27900 people and after all those years he gets 5 years in prison, which he must not be in prison because he is ill.
How is this fair?
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Zurich15326 Posts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp
I think this is also well worth reading as I find the term "camp guard" a but euphemistic. Sobibor was not a prison or concentration camp, it was an industrial complex designed for nothing but efficient killing. There were no guard on watch towers or anything like that. Their job was to take jews out of container cars, drive them into the gas chambers and burn the corpses after, all to be done as efficiently as possible.
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On the one hand, it's war. I've known soldiers who have gone off to war, some of whom were in my own family, and they all tell me the same thing: don't have sympathy for people that lose wars, because no one is ever going to have sympathy for you if you lose one.
On the other hand, the persecution of Nazi officials usually let all the lesser officers and henchmen go so they would testify against senior officers. That, and at this point, it's not like anyone is going to forget the holocaust happened.
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On May 12 2011 23:48 AutobotDan wrote:
On the one hand, it's war. I've known soldiers who have gone off to war, some of whom were in my own family, and they all tell me the same thing: don't have sympathy for people that lose wars, because no one is ever going to have sympathy for you if you lose one.
On the other hand, the persecution of Nazi officials usually let all the lesser officers and henchmen go so they would testify against senior officers. That, and at this point, it's not like anyone is going to forget the holocaust happened.
There's a big line between war and systematic genocide of civilians.
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On May 12 2011 22:58 XothermeK wrote:
The guy's 91 years old now, give him a break, don't think the court should even bother anymore, hes going to die out of natural causes in a matter of days anyway. There's more troubles in the world now to be dealing with than hunting WW2 criminals, like seriously.
And maybe its not, irrespective of this specific case, a bad idea to remind people behind current troubles that some acts will not be forgotten or be matter of how long you are able to hide.
If he is guilty of this, he should answer for his crimes. I don't care how old he is.
Some call it vengeance and I can see their point. But personally it would conflict with my sense of justice if someone performing the crimes he has been accused of was let go due to age considerations. Someone like that deserves to die behind bars.
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Israel2209 Posts
To shed some light on the trial in Israel.
He was tried and found guilty in Israel for crimes he committed in Treblinka. During the trial he claimed he was never in Treblinka and only served in Sobibor.
After 5 years in Israeli prison the Supreme Court reverted the ruling because they could not say without a reasonable doubt that all the testimony and evidence about the warden from Treblinka refer to him. The court refused to discuss matters related to his crimes in Sobibor because they were not in the original indictment, he was released from prison and sent back to the US.
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How many would've done anything differently? You are a soldier, guarding camp in which is people your state has declared inhuman beings. Most of germans shared that perspective, even if majority wouldn't have slaughtered them, very few cared for their rights.
Those people are no different than you at US. Only difference is the goverment. If you would've been a soldier guarding a interment camp there, you would've done exactly the same, would've shot every single jew trying to escape and stayed there as long as your orders tell you to.
There has been enough research and even interviews with former soldiers who tell, that when shooting first few jews, they feel anxious, after 10th carriage only the recoil, to back this up.
User was warned for this post
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all i can say is i hope there would be more important things to accomplish than tracking down and prosecuting an 89 year old man who already spent 8 years in prison for the same crime(s).
On a side note, i find it really ironic that the german justice system is going all-out to prosecute a man for following orders from the political leaders of germany at the time of the war. (correct me if i'm wrong on that one xD)
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Double post
If any mod can delete this since I accidently hit the "Back" button on Mozilla and it reposted my previous message.
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On May 12 2011 23:15 jello_biafra wrote:
It was the SS that guarded the concentration camps and did the rounding up of the "undesirables", you had to volunteer to join the SS and it's likely people knew what this would entail so "I was only following orders" really isn't a valid excuse. If you joined the Wehrmacht, as most Germans did, then you were far less likely to be a party to war crimes. This guy was Ukrainian however, I know the SS recruited a lot of people from the occupied countries and I'm not sure how easy it was to join the regular German military as a foreigner, so he may not have had much choice in the matter.
It's voluntary in the sense that he had two choices, go to the grinder in the East or guard some Jews. One choice was a death sentence, the other was not. The SS, especially towards the end of the war, was conscripting dozens of foreign legions from places as far as Syria to fight and guard the concentration camps. It was not the SS envisioned by Himmler which was an all Aryan para-military organization answerable only to the Fuhrer.
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so much time has passed since there is no point in actually detaining this man, even if he is an accessory to murder
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So does that mean 90% of the prison guards (the ones who didn't flee) are all murderers incapable of any redemption? Remember they had old, women and children do the guarding when they prisoners are in city and had them help exterminate when there weren't enough soldier around. Plenty of them could have refused or flee bad did not.
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I cannot believe some of the arguments people are using against the rightful punishment of this guy.
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When looking at the topic title, for a moment I though this was about George W. Bush, but then I saw the death count he was accused of and it was way too low for him...
On May 13 2011 00:35 Manimal_pro wrote:
so much time has passed since there is no point in actually detaining this man, even if he is an accessory to murder
Murder and accessory to murder should never be too much time. They could take all his belongings and give them to the families of the victims.
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EPT
