A Final Effort to Find Nazi War Criminals

[steve2470]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130507-nazi-war-criminal-holocaust-auschwitz-hans-lipschis-simon-wiesenthal-center-demjanjuk/



You can't hide from justice forever—not even for war crimes committed decades in the past, and not even when you're 93.

That message resounded loudly this week as Germany announced the arrest of Hans Lipschis, age 93, for complicity in mass murders that took place at the notorious Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he served as a guard in 1941-1945. Lipschis—who says he worked as a cook at Auschwitz—is the first to be charged from among a list of 50 former Auschwitz guards that the country's Central Office of the Judicial Authorities for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes plans to probe.

The Demjanjuk Precedent

Why go after them now, 68 years after the end of World War II? Because it was not always possible to do so in the past. In 2011, the conviction in Germany of Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk, who had served as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland, set a legal precedent for interpreting evidence more broadly than before. Until then, German prosecutors essentially had to prove that a suspect had committed specific crimes against specific victims at a particular time and date, and such direct evidence against camp guards was difficult to produce.

[ellisonz]

1. I hope they throw the book at every last one of these people until they are no more. n/t

[tblue]

2. Get 'em.

Let them spend the rest of their days in the pokey.

[HiPointDem]

3. so was he a guard or a cook? one thing i would like to know, though...why the zeal to pursue

guards a/o cooks when guys like this, and their heirs, go free, rich as ever?

During the war, Krupp was allowed to take over many industries in occupied nations, including Arthur Krupp steel works in Berndorf, Austria, the Alsacian Corporation for Mechanical Construction (Elsaessische Maschinenfabrik AG, or ELMAG), Robert Rothschild's tractor factory in France, Škoda Works in Czechoslovakia, and Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau AG (Deschimag) in Bremen. This activity became the basis for the charge of “plunder” at the war crimes trial of Krupp executives after the war.

As another war crime, Krupp used slave labor, both POWs and civilians from occupied countries, and Krupp representatives were sent to concentration camps to select laborers. Treatment of Slavic and Jewish slaves was particularly harsh, since they were considered sub-human in Nazi Germany, and Jews were targeted for "extermination through labor". The number of slaves cannot be calculated due to constant fluctuation but is estimated at 100,000, at a time when the free employees of Krupp numbered 278,000. The highest number of Jewish slave laborers at any one time was about 25,000 in January 1943.[4]

In 1942–1943, Krupp built the Berthawerk factory (named for his mother), near the Auschwitz concentration camp, for production of artillery fuses. Jewish women were used as slave labor there, leased them from the SS for 4 Marks a head per day. Later in 1943 it was taken over by Union Werke.

The battle of Stalingrad in 1942 convinced Krupp that Germany would lose the war, and he secretly began liquidating 200 million Marks in government bonds. This allowed him to retain much of his fortune and hide it overseas.

At the Krupp Trial, held in 1947–1948 in Nuremberg following the main Nuremberg trials, Alfried and most of his co-defendants were convicted of crimes against humanity (plunder and slave labor), while being acquitted of crimes against peace, and conspiracy. Alfried was condemned to 12 years in prison and the “forfeiture of all [his] property both real and personal,” making him a pauper. Two years later, on January 31, 1951, John J. McCloy, High Commissioner of the American zone of occupation, issued an amnesty to the Krupp defendants. Much of Alfried’s industrial empire was restored, but he was forced to transfer some of his fortune to his siblings, and he renounced arms manufacturing.

1959 was also Krupp’s deadline to sell his sequestered industries, but he was supported by other Ruhr industrialists, who refused to place bids. Krupp not only took back control of those companies in 1960, he used a shell company in Sweden to buy the Bochumer Verein für Gussstahlfabrikation AG, in his opinion the best remaining steel manufacturer in West Germany. The Common Market allowed these moves, effectively ending the Allied policy of decartelization. Alfried was the richest man in Europe, and among the world’s handful of billionaires.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp

It's the same story for most of the big industrialists and financiers who were the actual power behind the third reich. They a/o their descendants are still around, still powerful and rich.

Without them there would have been no concentration camps for guards a/o cooks to work at and do shitty things that were condoned, nay encouraged, by the more powerful.

Nazis are still running the world. We're just not supposed to notice.

[PCIntern]

4. Ask Pat Buchanan...

He wants to award him a Medal Of Honor.