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| Should old former Auschwitz guards be jailed? |
| Yes. They all contributed to the deaths of innocents and all deserve punishment. |
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35% |
[ 5 ] |
| Yes, but only the ones who are found guilty of specific crimes as individuals. |
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| No. They're old men now, what's the point? |
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7% |
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| I honestly don't know how I feel about this stuff. |
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14% |
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| Total Votes : 14 |
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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| David wrote: | In that case the distinction depends upon precedent i.e. the fact that no forerunner to our society has criminalised consumption of meat, whereas German societies prior to 1933 had generally criminalised mass murder without regard for ethnicity. I don't find that overly satisfying for who is to say that a different cultural view in a different time and place is morally superior? but let's apply that principle to the following hypothetical:
In ten years' time, an international criminal court finds that Australia's treatment of refugees has been unlawful and that the perpetrators ought to be held to account. Certainly, most of us would expect key figures like Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Dutton to be punished, and perhaps culpability could extend to encompass whoever at Transfield or Wilson was in charge of the facilities. But would even the most ardent refugee advocate call for the prosecution of the security guards, cooks, cleaners and office workers at those detention centres? Personally, I can't see why that would be useful or necessary. Surely punishing the architects and administrators would be sufficient. Yet, here, too, there is precedent for us not subjecting innocent people to such treatment. Does that fundamentally alter the culpability (or otherwise) of mere functionaries in this instance? |
No, you misunderstand the entire exercise, I think - it isn't about making some declaration down the track of a kind of legal fiction to the effect that the law was always as you then later say it is - it is about identifying as crimes and punishing those acts that were manifestly illegal at the time they were done.
There is no doubt that under the common law administrative detention is lawful, irrespective of the harm incidentally inflicted - the remedy for harm caused in the course of any such detention (as with the remedy for wrongful harm inflicted during the course of imprisonment) lies in the law of tort (that is, civil financial compensation for wrongful acts) and the illegality of anything done in the course of the detention does not vitiate the lawfulness of the detention.
Of course, your hypothetical might have a few more teeth if an international criminal court were convened at some time in the future to try persons associated with, say, an alleged program of systematic administration of torture in detention centres (assuming any facts supporting such an allegation came to light). That is because torture is (probably) illegal in all circumstances under domestic and international criminal law. So, one couldn't reasonably criticise the conduct of a guard in a detention centre who assisted with the operation of the detention centre qua detention centre. One could, on the other hand, reasonably criticise the conduct of (and, of course, prosecute) a detention centre guard who assisted with the operation of the detention centre if it were the case - and the guard well knew - that part of the very purpose of the detention centre was to inflict torture on those persons who were administratively detained.
In any event, as I have already said, your hypotheticals are just debating points. Those old men who were involved with what went on in places like Auschwitz were involved in the operation of places that were operated for the deliberate purpose of killing people in huge numbers. It is simply inconceivable that anyone of sound mind and normal psychopathology could have turned their mind to what was being done there and concluded at the time that it was all OK. This particular man's evidence seems to have been that he thought he was involved in a criminal operation and he was sorry for - and ashamed of - what he did. That's probably an appropriate human response - since what he did was be criminally complicit in the murders of 170,000 people - I don't see that there is any point at which you can say that enough time has passed to justify leaving that sort of wrongdoing lie.
Your position, I think, boils down to a mere assertion that what this chap did wasn't really all that bad and doesn't warrant pursuing him now. That's fine - but you can't possibly win that argument because this was just common or garden murder and he was an accessory to quite a lot of it. |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| stui magpie wrote: | | David wrote: | | watt price tully wrote: | Should 90-year-old Nazi death camp guards be punished?
I didn't realize that the Nazis employed 90 year olds.
He did the crime as a young man. He finally got caught, do the time. |
He didn't 'get caught'. He wasn't hiding. They simply decided to lower the threshold of culpability from actually being responsible for war crimes to simply working at a death camp in pretty much any capacity. There's a degree of convenience here: had they decided to punish people like Hanning in the aftermath of WW2, many hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Germans and European collaborators would have been serving jail time. It seems perhaps a little opportunistic to chase down such people now simply because so few are left. |
I'm still struggling with the bolded bit.
How does something become criminal in retrospect like that?
And I've read P4S's very good responses, but I must have missed that bit. |
That's my point, Stui - it didn't become retrospectively criminal to be an accessory to murder. It always was criminal to be an accessory to a murder. There had, however, for some time been a view in German courts that one couldn't convict someone of a "Nazi crime" unless there was evidence that the person had taken active part in specific wrongful events. Demjanjuk's trial in 2009 changed that in German domestic law.
The accurate way of looking at this is that nothing changed about the criminality of this man's actions - what changed were the rules about what (and how) evidence would be received of criminal conduct in Nazi death camps. Thus, the goal posts weren't moved after the event - what he did was always criminal, it just wouldn't have been susceptible to proof under the previous principles. It's just like convicting a murderer now on DNA evidence that you couldn't have convicted 40 years ago because you couldn't rely on DNA evidence. It doesn't make the defendant any more or less a murderer, it just makes it possible to run a successful prosecution. |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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I dare say you are a good lawyer, as that was excellent. 
You just justified moving the goal posts by saying they weren't moved.
Interesting case study that Demjanuk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| I double dare you. |
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| stui magpie wrote: | I dare say you are a good lawyer, as that was excellent.
You just justified moving the goal posts by saying they weren't moved.
Interesting case study that Demjanuk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk |
Interesting case indeed & I recall the news reporting at the time.
Many Ukrainians & Lithuanians amongst many others were active & complicit in the murder of Jews during WW2. Although some like Helen Darville (Demidenko) like to white wash the time. The extremist right wing nutter that she is has been David Leyonhjelm's political advisor. With luck this election should see the end of both those nasty pieces of work.
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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Member 7167
"What Good Fortune For Governments That The People Do Not Think" - Adolf Hitler.
Joined: 18 Dec 2008
Location: The Collibran Hideout
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My wife in a past life was a Veteran Affairs nurse. Over time she became friends with many of he patients. One patent she nursed for years worked on the Burma railway. He had little resentment for the Japaneese and said that there were many Japanese guards who did what they could to assist the prisoners and the guards themselves were treated poorly by the officers. Many of these guards had little to no choice in the duties imposed upon them.
I would suggest that potentially the German in question also had little choice. He too may have helped prisoners at every opportunity. To defy orders could easily result in a court Marshall and a firing squad. There was little value placed on individual lives in those times and in in those circumstances.
Unless there is compelling evidence to show that he committed war crimes directly and treated the prisoners badly he should be released and left to live his final days in peace. Violence and hate just generate more violence and hate.
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Now Retired - Every Day Is A Saturday |
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think positive 
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Member 7167 wrote: | My wife in a past life was a Veteran Affairs nurse. Over time she became friends with many of he patients. One patent she nursed for years worked on the Burma railway. He had little resentment for the Japaneese and said that there were many Japanese guards who did what they could to assist the prisoners and the guards themselves were treated poorly by the officers. Many of these guards had little to no choice in the duties imposed upon them.
I would suggest that potentially the German in question also had little choice. He too may have helped prisoners at every opportunity. To defy orders could easily result in a court Marshall and a firing squad. There was little value placed on individual lives in those times and in in those circumstances.
Unless there is compelling evidence to show that he committed war crimes directly and treated the prisoners badly he should be released and left to live his final days in peace. Violence and hate just generate more violence and hate. |
great post, i totally agree
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| Member 7167 wrote: | My wife in a past life was a Veteran Affairs nurse. Over time she became friends with many of he patients. One patent she nursed for years worked on the Burma railway. He had little resentment for the Japaneese and said that there were many Japanese guards who did what they could to assist the prisoners and the guards themselves were treated poorly by the officers. Many of these guards had little to no choice in the duties imposed upon them.
I would suggest that potentially the German in question also had little choice. He too may have helped prisoners at every opportunity. To defy orders could easily result in a court Marshall and a firing squad. There was little value placed on individual lives in those times and in in those circumstances.
Unless there is compelling evidence to show that he committed war crimes directly and treated the prisoners badly he should be released and left to live his final days in peace. Violence and hate just generate more violence and hate. |
So, are you saying that somehow he wasn't really an accessory to 170,000 murders or that he was but shouldn't now be given any punishment for it? |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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I think he is saying in the articles there is no proof put forward that he was guilty of anything more than being a soldier who was unfortunately stationed at the camp.
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| So, which is it, TP - (1) he didn't actually commit any crime (so that the convictions are wrong) or (2) he did but what he did wasn't bad enough to be sent to prison for? |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Pies4shaw wrote: | | So, which is it, TP - (1) he didn't actually commit any crime (so that the convictions are wrong) or (2) he did but what he did wasn't bad enough to be sent to prison for? |
By the evidenc in the article, which is all I have, I don't think he is guilty of anything.
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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5150 
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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| think positive wrote: | | Pies4shaw wrote: | | So, which is it, TP - (1) he didn't actually commit any crime (so that the convictions are wrong) or (2) he did but what he did wasn't bad enough to be sent to prison for? |
By the evidenc in the article, which is all I have, I don't think he is guilty of anything. |
I wonder if you could use double jeopardy - he was tried for his crimes in the camps but they burned all the records. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Pies4shaw wrote: | | Member 7167 wrote: | My wife in a past life was a Veteran Affairs nurse. Over time she became friends with many of he patients. One patent she nursed for years worked on the Burma railway. He had little resentment for the Japaneese and said that there were many Japanese guards who did what they could to assist the prisoners and the guards themselves were treated poorly by the officers. Many of these guards had little to no choice in the duties imposed upon them.
I would suggest that potentially the German in question also had little choice. He too may have helped prisoners at every opportunity. To defy orders could easily result in a court Marshall and a firing squad. There was little value placed on individual lives in those times and in in those circumstances.
Unless there is compelling evidence to show that he committed war crimes directly and treated the prisoners badly he should be released and left to live his final days in peace. Violence and hate just generate more violence and hate. |
So, are you saying that somehow he wasn't really an accessory to 170,000 murders or that he was but shouldn't now be given any punishment for it? |
While I appreciate the sentiment, I think there is a key difference here.
The Japanese were pretty horrible in their treatment of POW's (I had a great Uncle who was in Changi) and they killed a lot of people on the Burma railway, both POW's and others, through systematic neglect and cruelty.
However, they didn't set out to systematically exterminate the people they captured. The Nazi death camps were set up for one purpose and one only, to Kill.
There is a difference between a guard at an extermination camp, they are an accessory to murder. Mitigation would take place in the sentencing.
A guard at a POW camp (and the Germans had them too) would only be responsible for their own behaviour while a guard.
I'm still bugged by the retrospectivity issue, but I can see the difference in these two scenarios.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mountains Magpie
Joined: 01 Mar 2005
Location: Somewhere between now and then
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Well, history is written by the winners. They appear to do the prosecuting too.
Anyone know how many WW2 Russians have been successfully prosecuted? I wouldn't mind betting the answer is zero.
Changing the laws in recent years to enable more people in Germany to be prosecuted reeks of actions of people with only vengeance on their minds.
Eventually, all parties will be dead.
Hopefully peoples and nations can then begin to heal and move on. But I doubt it very very much.
MM
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Spiral progress, unstoppable,
exhausted sources replaced by perversion |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Pies4shaw wrote: | | So, which is it, TP - (1) he didn't actually commit any crime (so that the convictions are wrong) or (2) he did but what he did wasn't bad enough to be sent to prison for? |
The answer is that we don't know (I would define such a charge far more strictly than you have here there's a difference between merely being present in an official capacity during an atrocity and actually actively taking part in its commission). Therefore, the principle of presumption of innocence should apply.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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