German man convicted for mass murder while Auschwitz guard

[Grant]

A German court convicted a former SS guard at tje Auschwitz death camp of acting as an accessory to the murder of 170,000 people, said Anneli Neumann. spokesperson for Detmold district court, Friday.

"You spent nearly two and half years in Auschwitz and therefore you helped in the mass murder," said Judge Anke Grudda during sentencing, according to CNN Affiliate ARD.
The court then sentenced the 94-year-old man to five years in prison, or about one minute for every 15 lives.
Hanning denied being directly involved in the killings.
Doctors determined him fit to stand trial, but only for two hours a day, on account of his age, a court official said previously.
His legal team have one week to appeal the verdict.

A number of Auschwitz survivors had been set to testify at the trial, the official said.
The attorney general of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia is prosecuting the case as authorities seek to bring surviving alleged war criminals to justice.

Last push for justice
Hanning's trial is one of a number of criminal proceedings in recent times dating from the Holocaust as German authorities push to hold the last living Nazis accountable before their deaths.
In July, a court in Germany sentenced former Nazi officer Oskar Groening, known as "the bookkeeper of Auschwitz," to four years in prison.
Two other cases are set to appear in German courts in the coming months, including a 95-year-old former medical attendant at Auschwitz accused of being an accessory to at least 3,681 murders.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/17/europe/auschwitz-ss-guard-convicted/

 

[FNfal]

94 year old :wtf:
Next they will bash cripples .

 

[Mortymoose]

Also think at the age, it's a wee bit pointless.....

 

[ToxicBunny]

This is entirely pointless in my opinion.

If he were to step foot in jail at 94 it is effectively a life sentence, he will die there.

 

[lived666]

This is entirely pointless in my opinion.

If he were to step foot in jail at 94 it is effectively a life sentence, he will die there.

boo****inghoo

 

[Nanfeishen]

Seriously pathetic , serves no point whatsoever.

 

[etienne_marais]

Seriously pathetic , serves no point whatsoever.

You're wrong. It serves to reinforce an unbalanced concept of evil solely on the axis members while ignoring the tremendous atrocities of the Red Army and the rise of Communism.

 

[DWAAS]

If you were a mere soldier in the German army during WWII, a soldier with no decision making powers, a soldier in Hitler's Wehrmacht and it so happened that you were stationed at Auschwitz , would you have said to your superiors no f**k this, I want no part of this ****? Me doubt that very much.

It's very convenient to judge in 2016 from behind a tech device over the

 

[MagicDude4Eva]

If you were a mere soldier in the German army during WWII, a soldier with no decision making powers, a soldier in Hitler's Wehrmacht and it so happened that you were stationed at Auschwitz , would you have said to your superiors no f**k this, I want no part of this ****? Me doubt that very much.

It's very convenient to judge in 2016 from behind a tech device over the

Actually not. I think morality dictates that there are limits to what we should be willing to do and accept, even at the cost of our own lives. Hanning exceeded those limits in more than one way. He did not just join the regular army (Wehrmacht), but he joined the Hitler youth in 1935 and then the Waffen SS (armed wing of the SS) in 1940. Joining of the Waffen SS was voluntarily and everyone knew what the purpose of the SS was.

My grandfather (Austrian) who fought both WW1 and WW2 and was POW for several years in both wars told me in very descriptive and horrible detail what happened during both wars and everyone in his battalion hated the SS for the crimes they committed at the front lines. Trials like the one against Hanning have a moral purpose and his age should be immaterial.

I never recalled that Germans/Austrians have ever properly dealt with what happened in WW1/WW2 and the war-crimes committed (but lets also not forget what crimes were committed by the allied forces during that time). From history in school I recall that the nazi-concentration camps employed a good 10,000 soldiers/SS of which only a handful have been prosecuted (mostly due to german law prior to 2011 that you could only be prosecuted if you were directly involved in those atrocities)

 

[Nanfeishen]

You're wrong. It serves to reinforce an unbalanced concept of evil solely on the axis members while ignoring the tremendous atrocities of the Red Army and the rise of Communism.

I hear you

In the case of this man and the few old men left from that time , it is nothing more than political pandering and last ditch attempts by prosecutors for that final "feather in the cap"

Joining of the Waffen SS was voluntarily and everyone knew what the purpose of the SS was.

Yes, an elite military unit, shocktroops that were well trained with a bond and brotherhood that made them formidable opponents. More than half their numbers were foreigners , who signed up for the fight against Bolshevism.

They unfortunately had the bad luck to be linked to a political party that was outlawed at the end of the war, and due to which, their extraordinary battle feats and incredible stories, are largely untold and unheard of.

 

[LazyLion]

The need for Justice in this instance has no expiry date.

 

[R13...]

The need for Justice in this instance has no expiry date.

The perpetrator's expiry date is fast approaching though

 

[Nick333]

The need for Justice in this instance has no expiry date.

Exactly. The message here is you don't get to be an inhuman, monster, complicit in mass murder and die peacefully in your bed surrounded by your loving family if civilised people have anything to say about it. Fcck him. Hope the prison they send him to has good health care and they keep him alive long enough to serve his full sentence before dying the day before he gets out.

 

[etienne_marais]

Exactly. The message here is you don't get to be an inhuman, monster, complicit in mass murder and die peacefully in your bed surrounded by your loving family if civilised people have anything to say about it. Fcck him. Hope the prison they send him to has good health care and they keep him alive long enough to serve his full sentence before dying the day before he gets out.

I disagree. The message is one of a despotic humiliation and suppression of the German people as if only they ever indulged in unacceptable behaviour. History is replete with mass murder and tremendous crimes against humanity but we don't see film after film, documentary upon documentary, book upon book and reference upon reference of/to these other crimes.

 

[Nick333]

Yes, an elite military unit, shocktroops that were well trained with a bond and brotherhood that made them formidable opponents. More than half their numbers were foreigners , who signed up for the fight against Bolshevism.

They unfortunately had the bad luck to be linked to a political party that was outlawed at the end of the war, and due to which, their extraordinary battle feats and incredible stories, are largely untold and unheard of.

Shame. And, of course because they were fiercely loyal, Nazi, fanatics willing to murder for the Fuhrer.

The separately organised Allgemeine SS was responsible for the administration of extermination camps. Many members of it and the SS-Totenkopfverbände subsequently became members of the Waffen-SS, forming the initial core of the 3rd SS Totenkopf Division.[22][28] In addition, many Waffen-SS members and units were responsible for war crimes against civilians and allied servicemen. After the war the SS organisation as a whole was held to be a criminal organization by the post-war German government, due to evidence that it was responsible for war crimes. Formations such as the Dirlewanger and Kaminski Brigades were singled out, and many others participated in large-scale massacres or smaller-scale killings such as murder of 34 captured allied servicemen ordered by Josef Kieffer during Operation Bulbasket in 1944, the Houtman affair,[140] or murders perpetrated by Heinrich Boere. The most infamous incidents include the following:

Wormhoudt massacre by SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, 1940, France
Le Paradis massacre by SS Division Totenkopf, 1940, France
Pripyat swamps (punitive operation) by the SS Cavalry Brigade, 1941, USSR
Oradour-sur-Glane massacre by SS Division Das Reich, 1944, France
Ochota massacre by SS Kaminski Brigade, 1944, Poland
Wola massacre by SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, 1944, Poland
Huta Pieniacka massacre by SS-Galizien division 1944, Poland
Tulle massacre by SS Division Das Reich, 1944, France
Marzabotto massacre by 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS, 1944, Italy
Malmedy massacre by Kampfgruppe Peiper, part of 1st SS Panzer Division, 1944, Belgium
Ardeatine massacre by two SS officers, 1944, Italy
Distomo massacre by 4th SS Polizei Division, 1944, Greece
Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre by 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS, 1944, Italy
Ardenne Abbey massacre by 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, 1944, France

The linking of the SS-VT with the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV) in 1938 posed important questions about Waffen-SS criminality,[19] since the SS-TV were already responsible for imprisonment, torture, and murder of Jews and other political opponents through providing the personnel for manning of the concentration camps. Their leader, Theodor Eicke, who was the commandant of Dachau, inspector of the camps, and murderer of Ernst Röhm, later became the commander of the 3rd SS Totenkopf Division.[16] With the invasion of Poland, the Totenkopfverbände troops were called on to carry out "police and security measures" in rear areas. What these measures involved is demonstrated by the record of SS Totenkopf Standarte Brandenburg. It arrived in Włocławek on 22 September 1939 and embarked on a four-day "Jewish action" that included the burning of synagogues and the execution en masse of the leaders of the Jewish community. On 29 September the Standarte travelled to Bydgoszcz to conduct an "intelligentsia action". Approximately 800 Polish civilians and what the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) termed "potential resistance leaders" were killed. Later the formation became the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf, which one of the elite SS divisions, but from the start they were among the first executors of a policy of systematic extermination.
Belgian civilians killed by German units during the Battle of the Bulge

Waffen-SS formations were found guilty of war crimes, especially in the opening and closing phases of the war.[141] In addition to documented atrocities, Waffen-SS units assisted in rounding up Eastern European Jews for deportation and utilised scorched earth tactics during anti-partisan operations. Some Waffen-SS personnel convalesced at concentration camps, from which they were drawn, by serving guard duties. Other members of the Waffen-SS were more directly involved in genocide.[142]

The end of the war saw a number of war crime trials, including the Malmedy massacre trial. The counts of indictment related to the massacre of more than 300 American prisoners in the vicinity of Malmedy, between 16 December 1944 and 13 January 1945, and the massacre of 100 Belgian civilians mainly in the vicinity of Stavelot.[143]

During the Nuremberg Trials, the Waffen-SS was declared a criminal organisation,[141] except conscripts from 1943 onward, who were exempted from that judgement as they had been forced to join.

The SS weren't some military unit that had the misfortune to be associated with the Nazi's, they were created by the Nazi's to serve their will. And, the Nazi's weren't just another political party who had the misfortune of being on the losing side of a war. They were a criminal organization that used the democratic process to gain power then dismantled democracy once they were in power then went on to commit numerous crimes against humanity.

 

[LazyLion]

I disagree. The message is one of a despotic humiliation and suppression of the German people as if only they ever indulged in unacceptable behaviour. History is replete with mass murder and tremendous crimes against humanity but we don't see film after film, documentary upon documentary, book upon book and reference upon reference of/to these other crimes.

So because some escape punishment, we should not punish any? That's the dumbest idea I have ever heard in my life.

 

[EMAM]

He must die a long, slow, agonising death, no matter how long it takes

 

[DWAAS]

He must die a long, slow, agonising death, no matter how long it takes

sounds no better than what the Nazis did.
You're talking eye-for-an-eye right?

 

[Solarion]

Inb4 he bites into cyanide capsule during the medical examination Henrich Himmler style.

 

[GreGorGy]

He must die a long, slow, agonising death, no matter how long it takes

At his age, six months.

You know, while I do not support the death penalty, in this instance I think I could let one slide, if for no other reason then to make those last 6 months filled with fear and hopefully shame.