I did no-see-um that coming.
Hope the OP doesn’t mind if I stretch his hypothetical a bit further: What if this hypothetical woman killed the Nazi guard, not in 1950, but rather, the very day after V-E Day in Europe (Germany’s surrender,) or even on V-E Day itself? What should or would her punishment be?
No, I don’t think so. The East European Soviet satellite regimes did not look with a kindly eye on vigilantism, or people taking the law into their own hands.
Plus, the party line on Nazi crimes was the primary responsibility lay with the evil capitalist cliques who had orchestrated the whole business from the top, and only secondarily with the proletarians who were duped into participating.
The OP is a little inconsistent. In the thread header the man who is killed is a “Nazi guard”, but in the post he’s someone who “personally participated in the medical torture and death”, which I think suggests rather more than guard duties.
Either way, the party line would be that she should have denounced the man, not murdered him, but her treatment would likely have reflected the mitigating circumstances, which would be much greater if he were a sadistic medical experimenter than if he were a guard. She might have received a relatively light sentence, or she might have been diverted into the psychiatric system (which would be worse from her point of view, but optically better from the regime’s point of view).
If it happened in the US, which is unlikely, but let’s say she came here as a displaced person, and he falsified papers, and managed to come here too (it did happen), rather than attempt an insanity defense (or “diminished capacity”), which is unlikely to work, she is better off with a trial, or a plea bargain with a sentencing hearing, and using the “tortured my family” as a mitigating factor in sentencing.
Given that women were often given very light sentences for first offenses anyway in the 1950s, she would probably get just jail time (ie, less than a year, in county lock-up, not a prison), and then probation. The probation might be lengthy, and if she weren’t a citizen, or married to one, she might end up deported, and unable ever to return; if she were already a citizen, she’d not be a felon, and probably lose the right to vote, and a lot of other rights, so it’s not nothing, but I think it’s HIGHLY unlikely she would go to prison for life, or even something like 20 years.
I saw that, but sometimes even hypotheticals are hurtful.
The NAZIs are dead and sometimes dredging this up just stirs up a mob of frustrated angry people with torches & pitchforks look for anyone left living to blame. But there IS no one is left living To blame.
And there’s always someone in the back who’ll think “now I have True power!” and they’ll yell out “Burn the Witch/NAZI/Vampire/Chrysler/Dallas Cowboy/Atheist/etc”.
…and as much as I hate Tony Romo, he doesn’t deserve that.
“Killing a natzi guard”
I apologize but I’m going to have to be a pendant here and say there is no “t” sound in Natzi. The correct enunciation is “nazzy”.
See this short documentary for proper way of saying:
OK, that makes even less sense than the idea that you missed that the hypothetical was set in 1950.
I know this is a joke, but, from Wiktionary:
Fine, this thread isn’t for me then, nm.
The English language is no joke Sir. We fought the English long and hard for our Freedoms Of Speech.
Saddam Hussein was tried for his crimes. Seems appropriate that he was tried by the Iraqis rather than by a bunch of Europeans in the Netherlands, to me anyway. Also unlike the Nuremburg trials if the Europeans convened a tribunal today they never would have agreed to the hanging.
Grammar Nazi bait
Let’s say it is 1950 and a young Polish woman thinks she sees a German man who personally participated in the medical torture and death of her parents and brothers at Auschwitz. Enraged she runs up to the man and kills him on the spot.
What should happen to her?
This sounds familiar. It might not go smoothly.
I think we know what the use of the word in context implies. It’s more likely you accidentally flubbed the details between your two posts. Would you mind giving us a clarified scenario of what happened?