91-year-old woman charged over 260,000 Auschwitz deaths

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

There are the records and then there is any amount of hearsay and believe who you will and distortion of facts, numbers can only really be established through intake, transit and resource records, and there is enough available.

If anyone put me on trial for gassing 260,000 people over a three month period when i was busy operating a radio i would expect them to produce at least one body that had been gassed, demonstrate the means and physical evidence of were this had taken place and through what means i had disposed of so many corpses, all of these are entirely lacking for every single claim.

It is the case that many camps such as Dachau were claimed as Death Camps in the immediate Post-War period involving gas chambers and that these claims were subsequently exposed as untrue except for the two camps under Soviet control, were ridiculous supposed gas chambers were knocked out of pre-existing buildings in the absence of any actual being found, all of this to maintain the black propaganda that had arisen in the camps.

The irony in the claims that zyklon-B was used as a gassing agent is that it was actually used to try and prevent the major cause of death, typhus.

Testimony has proven to be highly unreliable and selective, here is a perspective from someone who was in the SS and stationed at Auschwitz for a period, he mentions that those former inmates who offered testimony contrary to the official line were simply ignored.

It all comes down to the obfuscation and distrotion of evidence and the manipulation of peoples emotions, this video is a classic example of the methodology involved and how it can be exposed as fraud, the perpetrators of these diabolical myths are the one's who should be on trial.

a reply to: Kantzveldt

It is without doubt a highly emotive subject but I fail to see how any young person at that time, after being brought up in the Nazi regime with all the propaganda could not be blamed for the murder of 260000 people purely on moral grounds

The propaganda machine has worked both ways for a long long time

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

People still made choices and you seem to missing the point - she chose to join the SS. It's not something you were made to do, you did it because you believed in the Nazi doctrine and Germanic superiority.

a reply to: stumason

Fair enough but she could hardly refuse to do her job or kick up a fuss....1944 was not 21st century no women's rights etc and I doubt if at 20yrs old she had knowledge or access to anything in particular apart from her own job of sending coded correspondence. Maybe she was just as shocked but alas the nazis had propaganda to a fine art and I'm sure like anywhere else she though she was doing a job for the betterment of Germany

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

She was SS - she knew what was going on and subscribed to the very ideal which promoted it.

a reply to: stumason

So what do you imagine would have been her own fate should she have come to her senses and refused to participate any further in operation of the radio? Chances are some superior SS officers would have deemed her a political dissident and placed her in the Death camps herself, or just shot her on the spot.

She possibly joined the SS in her youth along with other friends and like you have said Stu in another thread. People do stupid things when they are young. She could have been just as much a victim of circumstance as any of the other poor souls affected by the Nazi ideologies doing the rounds at the time.

Or she could indeed have been a hard line party member that willingly embraced the eugenics policies and subsequent resulting holocaust. If that's the case however one has to wonder how she managed to escape accountability at Nuremberg given the 260,000 deaths she is allegedly responsible for?

I suppose the real question at the end of the day is what do they do with her if or when found guilty?

a reply to: andy06shake

Quite, but only the true believers joined the SS. She would have truly believed in the cause, otherwise she would have gone into something else.

Granted, there will no doubt have been some amount of brainwashing but at the end of the day the choice was hers. It's not like she was conscripted and sent to the camp, she volunteered.

a reply to: andy06shake

Indeed youngsters do stupid things.... Pope Benefict was actually a member of the Hitler Youth

And I will just mention that towards the end of the War, when manpower was short on the ground the SS did in fact conscript people they even took conscripts and volunteers from France Belgium & Holland and other "related stock"...quite how voluntary those volunteers were is anybody's guess

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

The Hitler Youth is one thing, they were no more than children. The Waffen SS takes it to another level entirely - it was a dedicated, devoted fighting formation.

a reply to: stumason

My grandfather was a radio operator/ASDIC Sonar operator during WW-2. He was only 17, my point being rather a lot of them were only children. Different world, different time, different ideologies.

If the war had went the other way i wonder if he would have been held accountable for his actions?

a reply to: stumason

But it doesn't detract from the known fact that people were conscripted.

Quote from Wikipaedia

The only female guard to tell her story to the public has been Herta Bothe, who served as a guard at Ravensbrück in 1942, then at Stutthof, Bromberg-Ost subcamp, and finally in Bergen-Belsen. She received ten years' imprisonment, and was released in the mid-1950s. In a rare interview in 2004, Bothe was asked if she regretted being a guard in a concentration camp. Her response was, "What do you mean? ...I made a mistake, no... The mistake was that it was a concentration camp, but I had to go to it - otherwise I would have been put into it myself, that was my mistake

And as it says in that article most of the recruits were lured by various newspaper advertisments telling women to "show their love for the Reich" by joining, and thereafter the conscripts and volunteers mainly came from low class backgrounds. Many lived in fear both from the male SS Officers and the many many spies who didn't hesitate to report anyone not showing the right affection for the Reich

Upon liberation most of the female SS members of any importance were tried and many executed by the Russians and allied forces. Only those at the bottom of the rung or prisoners that had managed to work their way up the ladder to keep alive were not prosecuted. It is these lowly workers that are now being hunted down by the Israelis, those of no importance and thereafter being tried on the flimsiest of grounds (in my opinion). There is a story of a lady who went to the USA and didn't disclose to officials nor to her Jewish husband and family that she was a dog handler in Ravensbruck Camp. When this was found out she was deported but not tried as because it was so long ago she could only be tried for murder as murder has no statute of limitations....not on moral grounds not on complicity because she was there even though she clearly had a higher profile position than the radio operator in this particular story.

a reply to: andy06shake

Not really the same though, was it? Our boys weren't told they were superior, that all other races needed to be exterminated and we didn't run death camps. Comparing apples and oranges.

As for "what if we lost", I doubt any would have been treated any differently. The Germans were pretty good with their treatment of POWs and regarded the British as an "acceptable" race. Some elements of the Government and Military may have been prosecuted for the bombing of German cities, but by that point they had already lost the war - the only chance the Germans had to win it was the BoB and they failed, at which point we hadn't done anything to them that could be construed as a war crime.

In another example of conscription and the consequences of non compliance is Hildegard Lohbauer

Hildegard Lohbauer was a German unmarried mother with 2 children who worked in a weaving factory. She refused to go when she was conscripted to work in an ammunition factory and was imprisoned in Ravensbrück camp and later transferred to Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Bergen-Belsen.

and Helene Kopper

Helene (or Helena) Kopper was born in Poland and was a housewife with a husband and two children before war broken out. She was arrested in 1940 by the Gestapo for possessing anti-German leaflets and sent to Cracow. From there she was transferred to Ravensbrück for 2 years and then on to Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.

She worked in the Camp Police at Bergen Belsen.

A lot of these women had to seriously prove themselves to be as good as or better than their male counterparts and had to prove themselves loyal to the Reich. Unfortunately for some, they developed serious sadistic tendencies but were duly executed for their dreadful crimes

However on reviewing various sources listing many of the guards wardresses and higher ups in the female SS it seems very few indeed except the already psychopathic type, actually volunteered

a reply to: stumason

How is it not the same thing? They both held similar positions operating communication devices that were responsible for peoples demise. She controlled trains that sent people to there death by way of radio, and my grandfather targeted submarines by way of ASDIC which were ultimately destroyed resulting in loss of life.

The only real difference i can see is that the people aboard said submarines were military officers where as the poor Jews and other political dissidents were civilians.

End of the day however both the lady in question and my own grandfather were still carrying out orders that came from there respective governments and superiors. So to me it seems that victory is the defining factor as to who is and who is not prosecuted for perceived war crimes.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

When we're talking about individual guilt during wartime there's a big difference between those who serve under totalitarian regimes and those who fight for free nations.

You don't have a choice under totalitarian regimes.
So which is it? Were the Nazis true fascists or did she have free choice?
Can't have it both ways.

The endless German bashing that goes on even today I find very disturbing.
Why does Japan, China and Russia not get the same treatment?
War is always against populations, not just soldiers. That ended with the US civil war.
Britain bombed German civilians every night for 4 years and Japan committed atrocities every bit as bad as the Nazis.
Nobody hears a peep about those.

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

They were handing out Panzerfausts to 14 year old boys to defend the Fatherland.
Should we hang all them too?

Just to make sure vengeance is complete they should let her be raped by Russian soldiers then hung.
Make it historically accurate.
I think the Nazi hunters are out of a job due to old age and it's driving them crazy with nobody left to blame.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Very true considering Stalin was responsible for far more deaths than Hitler ever was. Which does nothing to diminish said atrocity's.

End of the day its the victors that reap the spoils of war and the vanquished that take the derry. But 70 odd years later what is the point in perpetuating the hatred further by way of prosecuting a 91 year old radio operator?

I understand that history should be remembered, least we repeat our previous mistakes but this just seems like PC overkill if you ask me. Such is the world in which we live.

a reply to: andy06shake

It's all about keeping the Holocaust front and center in the public eye.
90% of all the WW2 movies made in the last 10 years center on that too.

I read previous comments and have a few points:
1.The SS were considered an elite force by the Nazi regime, whose members were highly motivated and ideologically loyal to the Nazi party and Hitler. Only Aryans could be members (that changed for fighting forces towards the end of the war). Many were volunteers, and the selection process was strict.
The political-police of the Third Reich belonged to the SS.
Most of the war crimes committed by the Nazis (not just against Jews) were regularly performed by the SS, who was in charge of all the concentration camps and of the ‘final solution’. One of their main ideologies, even before the war started, was to fight “Sub-humans”.
This women clearly belonged to the SS.

2. Her age is of no consequence. She was an adult, and a SOLDIER at the time the crimes were committed. Without being highly motivated and able she would not have been in the SS, nor would she have served in Auschwitz.

3. Its extremely naive to think that someone who worked as a radio operator and was privy (and participated in transmissions) to much of the communications going in and out of the Auschwitz camps – was not aware of what was going on around them. Communicating orders, details of logistics and human shipments and goals reached – that was the role of a radio operator in such a place.
That’s beside the fact that there were other SS colleagues there who performed other more active duties, who certainly shared information. Nor could she have ignored the chimneys working around the clock, with their distinctive, flesh burning smell (other ppl who were in Auschwitz often commented on those chimneys and the constant smell).

The fact is – in her role she facilitated and assisted in genocide.

4. Most countries don’t have a time limit on murder prosecutions. In the same way there is not limit on prosecution of atrocities and ‘crimes again humanity’ such as genocide, in most of the modern world.
She is being prosecuted by her own motherland – Germany, for assisting and aiding in Genocide, whilst wearing German uniforms.
Up to the 1960’s most German states were very reluctant to prosecute Nazi war criminals. Tens of thousands were allowed to live long and happy lives, unlike their victims. It is only in the last 20-30 years that Germany has been more active in such prosecutions. Also due to changes in local laws in recent years, which allow prosecution of those who enabled and assisted in the genocide, even if they did not pull the 'trigger’ themselves.

5. Unfortunately, since WWII there were many cases of ‘crimes against humanity’, in many parts of the world. It is still going on.

Although it's a pity she was not prosecuted previously - this case is NOT about vengeance, and her age is irrelevant.
It is about justice to the victims and more importantly about deterring others from committing such crimes in the future, knowing that the threat of prosecution will always follow them, regardless of how old they are.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
a reply to: andy06shake

It's all about keeping the Holocaust front and center in the public eye.
90% of all the WW2 movies made in the last 10 years center on that too.

Yes - these old folks are prosecuted for the same reason the IRS goes after some high-profile tax evader every Spring - it keeps the money flowing.

On the other hand, the Jewish Census figures I found myself in the Jewish Encyclopedia (not meant for Goyim eyes) do not support 6 million fewer Jews in Europe during the course of the Nazi regime.