German Nazi camp guard, 92, charged as accessory to thousands of murders

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

BERLIN (Reuters) - German prosecutors have charged a 92-year-old former concentration camp guard with being an accessory to murder, in what will be one of the last ever cases against Nazi-era war crimes.

Hamburg prosecutors accused the man, identified only as Bruno D., of aiding and abetting 5,230 cases of murder during the almost nine months he spent on duty at a concentration camp watch-tower at the end of World War Two.

According to Die Welt newspaper, which first reported the charges, the man admitted to prosecutors during a voluntary interrogation last year that he had seen people being taken to gas chambers to be murdered.

"What good would it have done for me to leave? They'd just have found somebody else," he told prosecutors, according to the newspaper.

"I felt bad for the people there. I didn't know why they were there. I knew that they were Jews who had committed no crime."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/german-nazi-camp-guard-92-charged-as-accessory-to-thousands-of-murders/ar-BBW3Jwu?li=BBnb7Kz

[marble falls]

1. "I was only following orders."

[customerserviceguy]

2. Do the math

he was about 18 years old at the end of the war. He was probably herded into the Hitler Youth at an early age, and completely indoctrinated into Nazism. This doesn't compare with the fully-adult Nazis who used that defense at Nuremburg.

[LanternWaste]

3. Eighteen is old enough to think critically and deny earlier irrational opinions.

And he further threw the "I was too young to understand" excuse out the window when he attempted to rationalize his actions as benign.

[customerserviceguy]

4. Oh, he has guilt, all right

my point is that he's not the same Nazi scum that were hung at the end of the Nuremburg trials. Those were the decision makers.

You can "think critically" if you have access to at least one viewpoint besides the one that has been shoved down your throat. Any opposing viewpoints to Nazism were ones espoused by nations that were winning the war by mid-1944. It would have been extremely courageous to have adopted one of those viewpoints, and have abandoned one's post.

[marble falls]

5. "I was only following orders." Never equated him to Goering, Himmler, Hess, the Gestapo, ...

the WaffenSS, Alfred Rosenberg ect. He was only a technician but he had free will and a compliant conscience.

There is no apt punishment, but in adjudicating even a 90 year old man for crimes against humanity from 70 years ago demonstrates that our value for human life is still strong and getting his evidence and story into the record and in our history is an important thing.

The US when it drafts, include 18 year olds and they serve on the line and guard our "unfriendlies" in places like Gitmo. Even 18 year olds have to be responsible for their actions. In this country we send 16 year olds to life terms for participating in murders even when the actual killing is done by the hands of others.

In my mind punishing this old soldier is not important. His story and the statement that we as a society do not forgive or forget crimes against humanity is important. He needs to face the process even if an actual punishment is off the table. Exposing his compliance and participation is a small price for him to pay, even for a geezer only two years older than my dad.

[customerserviceguy]

6. Read up on the Hitler Youth

They were essentially brainwashed until the end. It even shows up in this old guard's attitudes about what went on.

[marble falls]

7. Excuses, excuses, excuses. Like afluenza.

[customerserviceguy]

9. Its not an excuse

It is just an explanation. This man deserves to have to face what he participated in, and acknowledge that it was wrong. But at the time it was going on, he was convinced that his activities would make him a hero of the Fatherland.

In a few years, when all of the eighteen year old guards are dead, will they go after fourteen year olds who were forced at gunpoint to take up arms against the Allies at the bitter desperate end of the war?

[Solly Mack]

8. K&R

[Initech]

10. And this is why I say "fuck Nazis".

[madinmaryland]

11. The only good nazi is a dead nazi. nt.