Quite how do you determine his guilt?
Or is the fact that he was present at Sachsenhausen enough to determine his guilt?
Ex Nazi Guard to stand trial
- Thread starter The_Unicorn
- Start date
Or is the fact that he was present at Sachsenhausen enough to determine his guilt?
r00fie1
Well-known member
A court determines his guilt or otherwise.
If Jerry Adams was charged at age 99 with ordering the death of British Soldiers would you dither and question the procedure of justice just the same?
On a slightly different note, a few weeks ago I watched a documentary called, A German Life. Very interesting show concerning interviews with a women that had worked for the regime. For me it showed the strangeness, insularity and willingness to toe the line of German people at that time. Wether she knew more than she admitted we will never know but I think I believed her in the end.
Glover_elbow
Well-known member
He wouldn't though because uk authorities have decided to go with a prosecution amnesty as it causes more problems than its solves
Glover_elbow
Well-known member
It is absolutely not crap at the age of 90+ there's almost a 50% chance of someone having dementia(not senility as you called it that's out of date terminology which as politically incorrect as calling someone coloured by the way).
If you read about the case they are talking about limiting trial time per day 2 to 2.5 hours purely because of his age. Therefore there has to be some physical or cognitive impairment otherwise trial times would be normal. As much as you want justice to be served I don't believe the man can get a fair trial at his age
I'm not dithering. The procedure of justice - or jurisprudence I think you mean - is about establishing whether the German (in this case) legal system could deliver a fair trial and arrive at a just verdict when there's so much evidence and opinion that could be prejudicial to the defendant. Some of it is posted on this thread above.
Gerry Adams at 99 being charged with ordering a killing of a British soldier is a red herring. The legal issues that would determine whether there was a trial are primarily about evidence. What evidence is there and who are the witnesses? What is the likelihood he'd receive a fair trial? He has been implicated in the 1972 murder of Jean McConnell, but he has never been tried. After 30 years (in 2002) there was insufficient reliable evidence.
Now go back to the concentration camp guy. It's at least 75 years. Would he (or she) be savvy enough to defend himself? Would the prosecution witnesses be able to identify him? Would they be able to to say definitively what he did or didn't do? German law disregards superior order as a defence, but it's unusual in that respect, it would be a defence in most jurisdictions. Would international pressure influence the trial?
And as I said before, where does the line end? Should the Red Army guards who starved and beat half a million German pows to death be tried? Or the Soviet soldiers who committed crimes against German civilians in 1945?
Justice must be blind.
r00fie1
Well-known member
I suggest you do your research on Adams.
As for "fair trial" (s) - thats for lawyers to fight for.
He should be tried.
Full stop.
r00fie1
Well-known member
No.
"there has to be some physical or cognitive impairment..."
We cant make those assumptions unless we have concrete evidence.
100-year-old Nazi concentration camp guard found fit for trial
“Several of the co-complainants are just as old as the accused and expect justice to be done.”
thehill.com
100-year-old Nazi concentration camp guard found fit for trial
100-year-old Nazi concentration camp guard found fit for trial
“Several of the co-complainants are just as old as the accused and expect justice to be done.”
Adam Barnes | Aug. 3, 2021
- A 100-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, accused of complicity in more than 3,500 murders, was found fit for trial.
- The man is accused of “knowingly and willingly” participating in the murder.
- The conviction of former camp guard John Demjanjuk in 2011 set a legal precedent to try individuals for complicity in crimes for their roles as part of the larger Nazi apparatus.
A 100-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, accused of complicity in more than 3,500 murders, was found fit for trial, authorties said.
Authorities first charged the unnamed man in February and, after a medical evaluation, determined he could stand trial for up to two and a half hours per day, according to the prosecutor’s office in Neuruppin, per The Guardian.
The man is accused of “knowingly and willingly” participating in murder “by firing squad of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942” and using “the poisonous gas Zyklon B” at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1942 and 1945.
“Several of the co-complainants are just as old as the accused and expect justice to be done,” Thomas Walther, a lawyer representing some of the victims, told Welt am Sonntag, according to The Guardian.
Sachsenhausen, established in 1936, held an estimated 200,000 prisoners from 1936 to 1945. The camp was initially set up to house political opponents but eventually held thousands of Jews — especially after Kristnalnacht, an antisemitic pogrom — with more than 6,000 Jews arriving at the camp in the immediate days after the riots.
The conviction of former camp guard John Demjanjuk in 2011 set a legal precedent to try individuals for complicity in crimes for their roles as part of the larger Nazi apparatus.
German prosecutors in February charged a 95-year-old woman with 10,000 counts of accessory to murder at the Stuttof camp, according to The Associated Press (AP). Peter Mueller-Rakow, spokesman for prosecutors in Itzehoe, said the woman would be tried as a juvenile given that she was under the age of 21 at the time of her alleged crimes.
“In the trial we will focus on the suspect who was in the camp as a secretary, and her concrete responsibility for the functioning of the camp,” Mueller-Rakow said.
r00fie1
Well-known member
This may be informative to those interested:
apnews.com
https://apnews.com/article/trials-g...e5cb/gallery/f0defea6666d443e8c38fef1560a7a55
FILE - In this July 18, 2017 file photo, the wooden main gate leads into the former Nazi German Stutthof concentration camp in Sztutowo, Poland. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, file)
BERLIN (AP) — German prosecutors have charged the elderly secretary of the former SS commandant of Stutthof with 10,000 counts of accessory to murder, arguing that she was part of the apparatus that helped the Nazi concentration camp function.
The 95-year-old also faces an unspecified number of counts of accessory to attempted murder for her service at the camp between June 1943 and April 1945, Peter Mueller-Rakow, spokesman for prosecutors in the northern town of Itzehoe, said Friday.
Despite her advanced age, the suspect will be tried in juvenile court due to the fact that she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes, Mueller-Rakow said.
The suspect, whom Mueller-Rakow would not identify in line with German privacy laws, is believed to be in good enough health to stand trial.
She has previously been partially identified as Irmgard F. by Germany’s NDR public broadcaster, which interviewed her at the retirement home where she now lives in a small community north of Hamburg.
She confirmed to NDR that she had worked as the secretary to SS officer Paul Werner Hoppe in Stutthof, but said she never set foot in the camp itself and did not know of murders taking place there.
Hoppe was himself tried and convicted of being an accessory to murder, and sentenced to nine years in prison in 1957. He died in 1974.
NDR cited a 1954 statement Irmgard F. had made when interviewed as a witness ahead of the trial, in which she told authorities all Hoppe’s correspondence with higher SS administration had gone past her desk and that the commandant had dictated her letters daily.
She also said she did not know of prisoners being gassed, but told authorities at the time she was aware Hoppe had ordered executions, which she presumed were as punishment for infractions, NDR reported.
The case against her will rely on new German legal precedent established in cases over the last decade that anyone who helped Nazi death camps and concentration camps function can be prosecuted as an accessory to the murders committed there, even without evidence of participation in a specific crime.
“In the trial we will focus on the suspect who was in the camp as a secretary, and her concrete responsibility for the functioning of the camp,” Mueller-Rakow said.
Initially a collection point for Jews and non-Jewish Poles removed from Danzig — now the Polish city of Gdansk — Stutthof from about 1940 was used as a so-called “work education camp” where forced laborers, primarily Polish and Soviet citizens, were sent to serve sentences and often died.
From mid-1944, tens of thousands of Jews from ghettos in the Baltics and from Auschwitz filled the camp along with thousands of Polish civilians swept up in the brutal Nazi suppression of the Warsaw uprising.
Others incarcerated there included political prisoners, accused criminals, people suspected of homosexual activity and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
More than 60,000 people were killed there by being given lethal injections of gasoline or phenol directly to their hearts, shot or starved. Others were forced outside in winter without clothing until they died of exposure, or were put to death in a gas chamber.
Last year, a former SS private, Bruno Dey, was convicted at age 93 of more than 5,000 counts of accessory to murder for serving at Stutthof as a guard and given a two-year suspended sentence.
German prosecutors charge secretary to Nazi camp commandant
BERLIN (AP) — German prosecutors have charged the elderly secretary of the former SS commandant of Stutthof with 10,000 counts of accessory to murder, arguing that she was part of the apparatus that helped the Nazi concentration camp function...
apnews.com
German prosecutors charge secretary to Nazi camp commandant
By DAVID RISINGFebruary 5, 2021https://apnews.com/article/trials-g...e5cb/gallery/f0defea6666d443e8c38fef1560a7a55
FILE - In this July 18, 2017 file photo, the wooden main gate leads into the former Nazi German Stutthof concentration camp in Sztutowo, Poland. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, file)
BERLIN (AP) — German prosecutors have charged the elderly secretary of the former SS commandant of Stutthof with 10,000 counts of accessory to murder, arguing that she was part of the apparatus that helped the Nazi concentration camp function.
The 95-year-old also faces an unspecified number of counts of accessory to attempted murder for her service at the camp between June 1943 and April 1945, Peter Mueller-Rakow, spokesman for prosecutors in the northern town of Itzehoe, said Friday.
Despite her advanced age, the suspect will be tried in juvenile court due to the fact that she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes, Mueller-Rakow said.
The suspect, whom Mueller-Rakow would not identify in line with German privacy laws, is believed to be in good enough health to stand trial.
She has previously been partially identified as Irmgard F. by Germany’s NDR public broadcaster, which interviewed her at the retirement home where she now lives in a small community north of Hamburg.
She confirmed to NDR that she had worked as the secretary to SS officer Paul Werner Hoppe in Stutthof, but said she never set foot in the camp itself and did not know of murders taking place there.
Hoppe was himself tried and convicted of being an accessory to murder, and sentenced to nine years in prison in 1957. He died in 1974.
NDR cited a 1954 statement Irmgard F. had made when interviewed as a witness ahead of the trial, in which she told authorities all Hoppe’s correspondence with higher SS administration had gone past her desk and that the commandant had dictated her letters daily.
She also said she did not know of prisoners being gassed, but told authorities at the time she was aware Hoppe had ordered executions, which she presumed were as punishment for infractions, NDR reported.
The case against her will rely on new German legal precedent established in cases over the last decade that anyone who helped Nazi death camps and concentration camps function can be prosecuted as an accessory to the murders committed there, even without evidence of participation in a specific crime.
“In the trial we will focus on the suspect who was in the camp as a secretary, and her concrete responsibility for the functioning of the camp,” Mueller-Rakow said.
Initially a collection point for Jews and non-Jewish Poles removed from Danzig — now the Polish city of Gdansk — Stutthof from about 1940 was used as a so-called “work education camp” where forced laborers, primarily Polish and Soviet citizens, were sent to serve sentences and often died.
From mid-1944, tens of thousands of Jews from ghettos in the Baltics and from Auschwitz filled the camp along with thousands of Polish civilians swept up in the brutal Nazi suppression of the Warsaw uprising.
Others incarcerated there included political prisoners, accused criminals, people suspected of homosexual activity and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
More than 60,000 people were killed there by being given lethal injections of gasoline or phenol directly to their hearts, shot or starved. Others were forced outside in winter without clothing until they died of exposure, or were put to death in a gas chamber.
Last year, a former SS private, Bruno Dey, was convicted at age 93 of more than 5,000 counts of accessory to murder for serving at Stutthof as a guard and given a two-year suspended sentence.
Thats the job of the court hence "if he is guilty"
I suspect the fact that the case is progressing suggests that there's a case to consider.
Sorry zzzzz didn't mean to offend or insult you.
My response was more a theoretical one rather a direct question.
I understand that he is still alive and that he has committed heinous crimes but so too are many U.S, British and Australians that served
either in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan who are also responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and wonder if we are
hunting them with the same eagerness.
One can only hope that he and others that I speak of denounce and apologise for their crimes because I'm of the great belief that
reconciliation is far more valuable to society than revenge.
I have absolutely no sympathy for him whatsoever but I do for his descendants who will have to carry his shame for the rest of their
lives and long after he is no longer with us.