Demjanjuk gets 94 minutes per Jew?

The BBQ Pit
1

Not really enough recreational outrage to entertain you, but I wanted to pit the sentencing of frail, elderly John Demjanjuk, who has been pursued for decades by various government busybodies all because of allegations he was an accessory to killing 28,000 Jews.

2004 thread on the case

The governments in question have finally had to admit defeat in the effort to pin 28,000 accessory murder charges on him, though – this week Germany was only able to convict him of a lesser count:

Accessory to 27,900 murders.

THAT must have been a big relief to him.

Okay, I get that he’s 91 years old. What I DON’T get is the sentence: 5 years.

Doing a little idle calculator-tapping, I figure that’s 94 minutes per count of accessory murder.

What’s with that? Is there some kind of a volume discount on Jews this week? Could I get 94 minutes for accessory to murder?

We could all reel off a list of cases in which someone got a heavier sentence for, well, less than 27,900 accessory murder convictions, but I’ll mention my wife’s nephew, who hasn’t killed anyone at all (that’s zero accessory murder convictions, for the benefit of any German judges trying to keep count), but is serving a roughly equivalent sentence. Although it sounds like hyperbole, I can say with literal accuracy that “sure, he made a dumb mistake, but he’s no concentration camp guard!”

5 years per accessory murder conviction seems lenient by that standard. But Demjanjuk won’t get 139,500 years.

In fact, he won’t get 5 years, most likely – he’s been released, pending appeal, and his lawyer feels he may not serve any jail time.

My online searches found this book review, which appears to indicate the sentence is not, in fact, out of line with one given in a similar case:

Well, I have no standing to complain about German law, but hasn’t the “only following orders” defense been discredited? And that last part – Nazi ideology predisposed Nazis to have lesser respect for certain people, so it’s less of a crime? That’s not what I would have ruled. :dubious:

This is, most likely, the last war crimes conviction from WWII. Talk about going out with a whimper instead of a bang. Hell, I’ve spent longer than 94 minutes per count fighting a traffic ticket, and that case was dismissed.

This is a strange time to think of my Dad, but he knew what to do with these guys. I’m not much of a gung-ho guy, but I do have his folded flag and Bronze Star displayed in my home.

Sorry, Dad. Sorry, survivors of Sobibor. I know it seemed important at the time, but that was then and this is now.

2

I read that he he was a low level prison guard. He is 91 so a 5 year sentence is a big deal.

3

Obviously, German sentences are concurrent, not cumulative.

4

Don’t (some countries, anyway) routinely sentence 40-year-old serial killers to long terms so that they will never get out? Like “60 years,” knowing the guy won’t live to be 100? Why should the unlikelihood of this guy living to be 100 result in a lower sentence for him?

Here’s a guy convicted of killing six people by arson, given a 310-year sentence, who failed to alter the sentence on appeal.

5

Buy one, get 27,899 free?

6

This does seem strange. I think one factor here may be our natural reluctance to harm very old men. Normal people (that is, people not like Demjanjuk) feel bad about doing bad things to people who appear very weak and frail.

That being said, it would be appropriate to ignore this natural and healthy aversion in this case. Demjanjuk should die in prison, far from family and friends, as an example to others: Proof that no matter how long you flee from your war crimes, you will pay for them in full if caught. Demjanjuk should have been sentenced to decades of incarceration.

One might object that he couldn’t possibly serve such a term. Fair enough; let him serve what he can, and we’ll forgive the rest if he should pass before completing it.

7

There are, I imagine, a number of arguments for and against concurrent sentences. Those that were considered important by the German legislature when the decision was made were probably the ones regarding the long term effects on society of having such a policy, rather than the possibility that the sentence(s) of a highly unusual case far in the future might upset an American.

8

Sure - he was a low-level prison guard in a death camp. It’s not like he was anything remotely like an innocent; this was a seriously bad guy. And a five year sentence might actually be survivable for him - that doesn’t seem right.

9

I think justice would be served in such circumstances.

10

Congratulations, Germany, on your triumph. By creating a brand new theory of legal culpability, based on merely being where crimes have been committed, you have demonstrated your dogged resolve in pursuing those whom you conscripted into performing heinous war crimes (being a prisoner at a death camp). With this model, you can now finally bring to justice those Germans who managed to escape their crimes all this time and later served in your government and businesses.

Oh wait, I forgot, they’re all dead. Oops.

11

Neither. German law doesn’t have the “99 year to make sure life is for life” clause that US law has; in fact, a special provision to Nazi crimes had to be added to the laws for murder to exempt them from normal running-out. That is, because German law is part of a justice system that’s about rehabilitation, not revenge, crimes are not persecuted after the time frame of the maximum sentence has run out anyway (and nothing else has been committed in the meantime). So if a 20 year old committed a crime, even a murder, and was caught at age 80, then under normal circumstances he wouldn’t be tried because even with life sentence, after 60 years, he would be out. The justice system considers an 80 year old person with a clean life in between a different person from a 20 year old.

Because of their scope and impact, Nazi crimes are exempt from this.

As to the amount he got, and that the sentence is not final yet, I only know what his defense attorney said yesterday on the news: “There is no direct evidence for his wrongdoings, only indirect that he was a guard; convincting a person for what a group did is against the Constitution and against all law”. So they are going into revision, and Demjanjuk might die naturally before the end of that.

12

It is a very serious - and legally new - turn from all previous decisions: up until the 60s, (and anew in a lesser degree after 1989 with the DDR border guards), low-level guards were usually released as “following orders” (and having no choice to disobey, as that would have likely resulted in the death penalty under the regime). From what the defense attorney said, it’s not 100% clearly legal to sentence one person for what a whole group did together.

13

According to multiple sources, there is no statute of limitations on murder in Germany.

Murder penalties are state by state in the US, but only in very few circumstances is a judge required to sentence a convict to life without parole, or to 99 years.

Try getting your knowledge of the US criminal justice system from sources more credible than folk songs.

The Demjanjuk trial was a crock of showboating, self-righteous shit. If what he was accused of is murder, then half the adult male population of Germany should have died in prison.

14

Bullshit. Half the adult male German population did not work in positions of power in death camps.

The “I’m old and it happened a long time ago” excuse doesn’t diminish his actions. I hope any other war criminals, regardless of age, are looking over their shoulders.

15

Many, many, many people risked their lives in opposition to what the Nazis were doing. Well-known names such as Oskar Schindler, Charles de Gaulle, Jean Moulin; lesser-known names such as Franz Jägerstätter (who did sacrifice his own life so as not to have the blood of hundreds of thousands on his own hands) and unknown names of the hundreds of everyday people who risked their own lives to save others.

One of my husband’s grandfathers was a German and was drafted into Hitler’s military. Knowing damn good and well what was going on, he asked to be assigned to a mountain regiment so that he could escape serving Hitler. He surrendered to the British at the earliest opportunity, having never had any part in taking any lives, and spent the duration of the war as a POW in an Italian prison rather than be part of the Nazis’ evil.

This piece of shit had options other than becoming complicit in hundreds of thousands of murders. May he rot in hell for all eternity.

16

"Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people. We can’t even deal with that! You know, we think if somebody kills someone, that’s murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that’s what they do. 20 people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever. And over that, we can’t deal with it, you know? Someone’s killed 100,000 people. We’re almost going, “Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning. I can’t even get down the gym! Your diary must look odd: “Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death – lunch- death, death, death -afternoon tea - death, death, death - quick shower”

Eddie Izzard

17

May Demjanjuk be sent to a prison filled with German Roma. They will prepare well for hell.

18

That’s easy for you to say. You never had to spend any time in a German POW camp.

And his supposed “complicity” is based on nothing but the fact that he was present at Sobibor while the death camp was operational. That’s it.

19

This accomplishes nothing.

The time to kill Nazis was during the Holocaust.

20

Can anyone point me to a book - or preferably an online source of information - that describes the transition of power from the during- and post-war German government?