I know but I'm saying for people on the left who cheer it on cause **** nazis

I understand why jewish people would want retribution but that's what this is. You aren't fixing **** by prosecuting this broad 70 years after the fact. It's not setting any sorta precedent or making society safer. Its purely revenge at this point. And if you want revenge then fair enough but call it what it is. Might as well skip the formality of a trial and just put a bullet in her head.

Let's be honest though: what are they gonna do? Jail her for a few years till she dies? At best she might last another five; are they really going to incarcerate a nonogerian? From a purely logistical point of view, look at all the extra medical care they'd need to give her in prison. And what about Covid? As a person of a very advanced age, isn't she going to be very vulnerable to that? Put her in a cell and she will probably die of the virus.

Why not give her a chance to state her case, issue an apology and leave it at that? Of course it won't bring back the dead, but isn't this just a case of prosecuting any lower (really lower) level functionary they can still find, just to be kind of bloody-minded about it? I don't mean to offend the descendants of any Jews who may have had people die in the camps, but doesn't there come a time when you stop pointing the finger of blame and extend the hand of conciliation instead?

I saw a programme where a female guard met one of the prisoners she used to deal with, and they had a sort of forgiveness and understanding thing that was quite beautiful. What is sentencing and imprisoning - or sentencing to death, I don't know if that's still a thing - an old old woman for being peripherally involved in the machinery of mass murder over seventy-five years ago really going to achieve?

Well they’re going to call it “justice” not “revenge” but sure there’s a lot of overlap.

I’m sure there are a lot of people who would consider that too merciful as well as distasteful. If they don’t have to do it in a way that would leave a bad taste in their mouths why would they?

Those are good points but on the other hand... it was the ****ing holocaust... you could make a strong argument that Germany got off lightly. If the Allies had had a different temperament they might not even be country anymore.

Regarding the program you saw: an individual may decide to forgive but for
something like this there’s no collective body that has the moral authority to offer forgiveness on a broad scale. It’s not like present day Israel has an actively anti German government. And we’d can’t ask the millions who were murdered to weigh in.

that gets back to what's the point of justice? You can't just hide behind the word. What do you mean by it? What purpose does it serve?

As for the last point, i don't respect bull**** formalities and theatrics. Its phony to me. If you want revenge then take revenge. If you can't handle the bad taste in your mouth from watching your enemy killed then you don't really deserve revenge in the first place cause your hearts not in it.

lol I hear ya but I mean this isn’t the landlord ripping off your deposit type of **** though

All the more reason why you should be able to stomach giving her a good bullet to the head.

I take your points OH (I may give them back but I'm short on points at the moment so bear with me), however I think it does have to be taken into account that the woman is now so very old and more to the point - she was a frigging secretary! Likelihood is that, yes, she typed up reports on so many thousands killed today etc, but for her it was just a job. Now I'm not going to advance the tired old defence "I was just following orders", which I never accept anyway. But as you yourself pointed out in another thread, or maybe this one, not sure - we'd all be collaborators in Nazi Germany. And if you're a girl of 21 and you're offered what might be seen as a plum post as secretary to the commandant of a concentration camp, would you refuse it? If you did, would you not bring suspicion upon yourself? Why is she turning the job down? Do we need to explore her loyalties, her family, her friends?

And at that age, right or wrong, 21 is just a kid. No 21-year-old German girl is going to be politically aware enough to know what she's doing is wrong. And is it wrong anyway? She's literally a pen-pusher: should she be held responsible because she had a job in a death factory? How much do we know about how much she knew about what went on?

I know it's hard to balance, but I just don't see the point. It's petty (in that sense) revenge. Different with Eichmann. Yes, he was in his eighties when hanged but he was a big wheel and personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. BIG difference.

She was a secretary... in a concentration camp. Nobody forced her to do it. The Germans never shot any fellow Germans for not participating in genocide.

And so what she was just a secretary? She knew where she was. She knew her place in the scheme. She was a cog in a murder machine. **** her.

And **** rehabilitating her. Genocide is genocide and people who commit or are complicit with genocide almost never get brought to justice so ****ing hang them.

And I don't give a **** she's 94. Sorry, grandma. Shouldn't have been such a good German.

You got a link to this story? I'd like to read the full thing before I comment further.

Well they’re not trying to execute her or paint her as the equivalent of Eichmann. Be careful that you don’t mischaracterize what’s taking place here.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nyt...mgard.amp.html

Woman, 95, Indicted on 10,000 Counts of Accessory to Murder in Nazi Camp

This actually imo is a much more interesting story with similar ethical considerations:

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/04/96396...-of-war-crimes

Ugandan Child Soldier-Turned-Rebel Commander Is Convicted Of War Crimes

That's why I asked for the link. Thanks. I've read it now, and I don't see anything in it to change my opinion. Surely hundreds, even thousands of clerical workers were employed in concentration camps? What were they all to do? Revolt? Quit? People had to earn a living. I just don't see the need. I think it's all posturing and revenge-motivated, and in some ways could be compared to how the Nazis reacted as the camps were liberated, killing as many prisoners as they could before they were stopped. Doesn't the link say they want to "get as many of these as they can before they die"? It just sounds a little vindictive to me. What good is it going to do?

I'm all for high or even low-ranking officers, guards, anyone involved who would have had daily contact with the prisoners and known exactly what was going on to stand trial, but to paint all the workers with the one brush and assume that just because they were there they share the guilt, is in my own personal opinion wrong and unfair.

Of course, were I a Jew I might think differently. But I wonder.

By the way, before anyone jumps down my throat about the comment above re the killing of prisoners, I'm not in any way trying to say they're the same, just that the motivation for both acts could be seen to be similar. Obviously, again, I don't intend any offence and I don't take these matters lightly, but I don't see them as black-and-white-you-were-there-so-you're-guilty ones either. I think it's easy for us to make judgements when we have no clue what it was like to live as a German under Hitler. Who among us would not have worked in a camp if they needed the money? Be honest. And also, how do we know for sure that she was aware of what was going on, or at least the degree to which it was going on?

No I wouldn't work in a ****ing concentration camp.

Yes ffs. I’ve sacrificed and compromised my ability to make a living over moral issues.

You think I’d take a job at an ICE detention center? I’d ****ing starve or put a bullet in my head first. Believe that. Some things are more important than that next breath of air.

Life puts tough dilemmas in front of some people. This lady obviously had unfortunate circumstances but goddamn that’s not a “I’m just doing my job” type of situation.

Church

Nor a church?

And tbh if a culture is so morally bankrupt that normal people would take a career in genocide then that's not the the time to make moral standards even more lax. Everyone should feel in their bones that mass murder isn't tolerable. I'm sorry if my position is too radical.

All right Hawk, tell me this. It's easy to say you'd not work in such-and-such a place on grounds of personal choice, fine. But if (and I'm not saying this was the case but we all know what Nazi Germany was like) you were told you had to/should work somewhere and that if you didn't it was said, or strongly intimated that suspicion would fall on you, and your house might be raided, friends questioned, all sort of crap said and done about and to you because suddenly you were a potential enemy of the state, would you still turn down the job?

I'm not saying she was under that sort of pressure - maybe she wasn't. But we don't know. The interview that was linked in that article is in German so I can't make head or tail of it. But allowing that she had that sort of choice - basically you're with us or you're against us - would you still be so quick to dump the job?

It's easy to say hell yeah I'd do this that or the other when there are no actual consequences to your decision, your stand, other than losing out on a paycheque. If your liberty/life was at stake would you still make that decision?

I know you’re a very kind person and that’s why you’re empathetic to this woman when presented the story in this context. However, I think if this was a documentary and the bulk of it was focused on the murders in that death camp and then at the end it showed the trials you’d be tying up the noose your damn self.

That's dumb as ****. Stop making up fake scenarios to justify siding with some old bitch.

I feel like the decisions I have made in my life demonstrate there’s things I will not do. I didn’t grow up in Nazi Germany so one can only guess. I did grow up and I do live in Necro-Capitalist America and bat you can roll your eyes in disbelief if you want to but I believe I have sacrificed a middle class life because of my lack of willingness to cooperate with the American Capitalist Death Machine.

When I look in the mirror I see a man who wouldn’t work in a ****ing death camp. Some people think if you believe that it means you have a lack of self-awareness. I think in my case I’ve earned the right to say it, however.

Hypotheticals? Ain’t nobody know.

True that. You can use your empathy to think up extenuating circumstances, but the truth is no realistic circumstance can justify working in a concentration camp. And even though I tend to side with the edgelord 'humanity is evil' perspective there are definitely many people who would stick with that moral boundary. There are also many people who wouldn't, and you can't be 100% sure what you would do in hypothetical situations, but that doesn't make it any less wrong.

I’ll tell you though. Whether it’s Hans Krása being murdered at Auschwitz or Eichmann hanging from the end of a rope a part of me always thinks “there but for the grace of god go i”

ICE Agents or Dumb ****s with too much Q-Anon in their heads?

I would masturbate over the bloated corpse of an ICE agent.

Right answer

Wrong answer

I'm not making anything up. In Nazi Germany you had to be a party member or you were an enemy of the state. It didn't take much to land you on a train headed for Auschwitz, so don't tell me there weren't those who fell in with what was needed because they had to, because they had no choice. Of course there were many who did it because it suited them, they hated Jews, they profited from it or for a thousand other reasons, but I guarantee you there were people who just did it because they had to.

I repeat, it's very easy to moralise and sermonise about how they shouldn't have knuckled under, should have stood up when you weren't there. I'm not saying this woman was in that position, but I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt and saying you can't just lump every German who worked in that system together.

But I'm not going to keep arguing it with you. Hawk at least has some sense of where I'm at, you just seem to be a step away from calling me a Nazi-lover, so we'll just leave it at that.

The numbers I've seen say that at the height of membership 10% or less of the German population were members of the Nazi party. So no, non-party members were not enemies of the state. You're just making **** up to back up your lazy position.

And this is still irrelevant to the idea that Germans who wouldn't be willing to be concentration camp secretaries might be threatened by the state into compliance. This is bull****. This woman made a decision to be part of a genocide. She is culpable for that genocide she was a willing participant in.

**** grandma. Hang the bitch.

Bat, just so we’re living in reality: If they decided you were in anyway part of a resistance, and they could define non-compliance as anything they wanted, they killed you. Let’s not get that twisted.

Say what you want. I've seen plenty of documentaries and read books which made it quite clear that you were required to join the Nazi party, no real choice. The Nazis controlled everything, from schools and hospitals to holidays and clubs. They were everywhere, and if you wanted to do business in Germany or basically just live in peace, you had to be a Party member.

I hope Burger King never comes under Nazi control; still, I guess at least they'll be able to say you were well hung.

Secondly,

I support that just on the grounds that I don’t want to give you a leg up on me as the most hateful poster.

By the way, as I already explained a) I'm not making things up, despite your contention and b) I'm not saying this is what happened, just allowing for the possibility that it might have been. You're determined to see things in black and white, so like I say, there's no changing your mind so let's just leave it to people who actually know more about the case than you or I.

I think they’re handling it responsibly. On the one hand, you can’t let someone who was in anyway complicit in what was possibly the worst crime against humanity in human history get a pass just because she’s old. On the other hand, they’re not dragging her through the streets and letting people throw rocks at her either. It’s a difficult, unpleasant situation and frankly I think they’re showing the right amount of nuance .

I'm sure you're right. It's just Bat's screams of "hang grandma" that are annoying me. I don't think nuance is in his dictionary. Unless it's fighing the Green Golem or something. Nuance dodges left, releases a burst of energy that knocks the Green Golem backwards! WOKKKKO!

He should have one of his testicles cut off. I’d say both but that would be completely lacking in nuance. One is reasonable and fair.

Nazi Germany was still a capitalist state that dealt with and traded with the outside world. It was not a 1984 hellscape. You could be a normal citizen who went to work and paid their bills and chillaxed because Nazi Germany's main ficus of oppression was non-Aryans. They rose to power on the basis of serving what the middle class saw as the status quo. So long as you were a good German who didn't have "ideas" you could probably live fine under the Nazis.

Again, if you were a "good" German you could probably do alright under the Nazis. The horror of the Nazi regime wasn't that it upended the lives of ALL Germans, but whose lives it upended and how it made you complicit while living under the regime. Plenty of Germans had plenty good things to say about the regime even after the war.

Civility politics can suck my ass. Grandma was complicit in a genocide. **** her. Your nuance is brainless.