# Last Nazi War Criminal To be Tried **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 3, 2009, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817 "2009-07-03T15:30:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ruby\_G](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/94ad74/32.png) [@Ruby\_G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruby_G)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/41 "2009-07-08T01:12:05Z")
My cousin was sentenced to 80 to 160 years for rape and he didnt even kill anybody. I have known people to get as little as 5 years for manslaughter. I dont see anything wrong with Nazis getting 100 year sentences. ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/42 "2009-07-08T02:04:51Z")
If Demjanjuk is guilty, he ought to be put away. But even if he croaks on the witness stand, it’s not like he’s gotten off scot-free. He was in solitary confinement in Israel for five years while his hanging sentence was appealed. You have to wonder why they’ve gone after this guy with such ferocity for 30 years, especially these latest German prosecutors. Surely there were thousands of German death camp guards whose identity and whereabouts could have been easily established, walking free for decades after the war. Were there many trials and imprisonments of similar low-level German guards? If there were, they didn’t make the news. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/43 "2009-07-08T03:24:04Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#): > > Surely there were thousands of German death camp guards whose identity and whereabouts could have been easily established, walking free for decades after the war. . I presume the Israelis got the ones the Nuremberg trials didn’t. [Simon Wiesenthal](http://www.kintera.org/site/pp.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=242614)and all that. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/44 "2009-07-08T13:24:02Z")
There was a case profiled recently on _Forensic Files_ where a man approached a car containing two teenaged couples on a lovers’ lane, ordered them out of the car at gunpoint, forced them to strip, raped the girls, then stole the car. He was stopped for a traffic violation by two unwitting cops, who he then fatally shot. Decades later forensic evidence (I think it was fingerprints finally tracked through a national database) led investigators to a man in his late 70s, who’d apparently settled down as a successful businessman. He expressed remorse at his sentencing and cried (though police said he appeared annoyed when they initially contacted him). He hadn’t been in trouble that anyone knew of for decades - did his lengthy sentence for murder do any good, since this old guy wasn’t at all likely to rape anyone or murder more cops? Did it provide some sense of justice for the victims, families and communities hit by these crimes? Did it send a message? To look at it another way, what if **Cicero** and his hypothetical wife had a hypothetical child who was kidnapped and murdered. Let’s say the killer got away and subsequently lived a law-abiding life for decades before being caught. Would the Ciceros say, “eh, let bygones be bygones”? Now multiply that by thousands of murders, as in Demjanjuk’s (alleged) case. Should bygones be bygones? ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/45 "2009-07-08T13:32:44Z")
I take your point. (BTW I think you missed a section somewhere above where I assume the guy was found guilty.) Nevertheless, if the murder of my hypothetical kids was 70 years ago I have no idea how I would feel. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/46 "2009-07-08T16:30:29Z")
How can Germany try him for this? Wasn’t he serving Germany by being a guard? He was acting under the direction and with the blessing of Germany while doing what he did. How can they now try him for that? ---
**Author:** ![ashman165](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@ashman165](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashman165)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/47 "2009-07-08T16:33:17Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > How can Germany try him for this? Wasn’t he serving Germany by being a guard? He was acting under the direction and with the blessing of Germany while doing what he did. How can they now try him for that? How can we try a person for mass murder if someone in the government says it’s okay? I think the better question is how can we not? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/48 "2009-07-08T16:42:32Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > Wasn’t he serving Germany by being a guard? He was acting under the direction and with the blessing of Germany while doing what he did. How can they now try him for that? I seem to have a vague recollection that the Nuremberg trials addressed the “I was only following orders” issue. Yes, there’s a purpose in prosecuting the man. It looks unseemly to prosecute someone so old after so long a period, true. But people who do what he did - granted that the specifics his actions are obscured somewhat by history - deserve no peace. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/49 "2009-07-08T16:45:46Z")
> [@ashman165](#): > > How can we try a person for mass murder if someone in the government says it’s okay? I think the better question is how can we not? Right. Another government could try the mass murderer, but not the one that ordered him to commit the mass murder. Isn’t it a sort of ex post facto law? It wasn’t a crime in Germany to kill Jews in 1944. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/50 "2009-07-08T16:48:48Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > Another government could try the mass murderer, but not the one that ordered him to commit the mass murder. That government hasn’t existed since mid-1945. > [@](#): > > Isn’t it a sort of ex post facto law? It wasn’t a crime in Germany to kill Jews in 1944. Do you know that for a fact? Germany was certainly killing Jews at the time, but we don’t know what the laws said. Since they had all the power, they could just as easily have ignored them. I know the Nazis prevented Jews from owning property and doing other things, but I don’t know that they ever made it legal to kill them. They just went ahead and did so. ---
**Author:** ![ashman165](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@ashman165](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashman165)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/51 "2009-07-08T16:52:47Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > Right. Another government could try the mass murderer, but not the one that ordered him to commit the mass murder. Isn’t it a sort of ex post facto law? It wasn’t a crime in Germany to kill Jews in 1944. No. You’re missing the point. A government official saying to someone “go ahead, do it” isn’t the same as it being law. ETA: **Marley** beat me to it. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/52 "2009-07-08T16:57:34Z")
I think I get it. Germany is trying to say that the whole Hitler/Third Reich regime was illegitimate and outside the bounds of German law itself? ---
**Author:** ![Gam\_Zeh\_Yaavor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3e96dc/32.png) [@Gam\_Zeh\_Yaavor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gam_Zeh_Yaavor)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/53 "2009-07-08T17:07:02Z")
There’s an important distinction to be made between Demjanjuk and the majority of those who played small personal roles in the Holocaust. If he had been at almost any concentration camp, even Auschwitz, I would probably not want to see him hounded in his old age. But my understanding is that Demjanjuk was employed at both Sobibor and Treblinka. Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec, and Chelmno were exclusively death camps; while Auschwitz served variously as both a labor camp and an extermination camp, the others existed _only_ to kill people. Nobody from the transports was spared except a small group to handle the corpses and sort their belongings, and they themselves were regularly killed. There were only two known survivors of Chelmno and none, I believe, of Belzec. Nobody who voluntarily worked at one of the Operation Reinhard death camps should die outside of a prison cell; I don’t care if they’re 80 or 120 years old. Part of my opinion is personal, since some of my relatives were gassed at Sobibor, but I believe that the time when and place where Demjanjuk participated was the absolute darkest and most evil part of the Holocaust; everybody who was willingly there must face justice, no matter how old or infirm they may be. ---
**Author:** ![ashman165](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@ashman165](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashman165)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/54 "2009-07-08T17:10:52Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I think I get it. Germany is trying to say that the whole Hitler/Third Reich regime was illegitimate and outside the bounds of German law itself? Sigh. I hate to do this, but please cite the specific German law which mandated the extermination of jews. Or in the alternative, the law which at least allows for it. The argument you aren’t getting is “was told to do by a government official higher than me” versus “section \_\_ of code \_\_\_ paragraph \_\_\_ subpart \_\_\_ of general statute \_\_ in universal decree \_\_\_ says \_\_\_”. Sorry for the long example, but it is about the Germans, so precision seemed apt. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/55 "2009-07-08T17:27:51Z")
> [@Gam\_Zeh\_Yaavor](#): > > There were only two known survivors of Chelmno and none, I believe, of Belzec. I am speechless. ---
**Author:** ![ashman165](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@ashman165](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashman165)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/56 "2009-07-08T17:35:52Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I am speechless. As are most of the guests there, it would seem. I’d just like to iterate that while I’m generally opposed to the death penalty, when it comes to genocide, or its attempt, there is no punishment too severe for its perpetrators and “deciders”. Sadly, we can only kill them once. But it should be public, slow and painful if for no other reason to get out the word that we hate it. Of course, the obvious point is that at the slightest hint of it happening, anywhere, the rest of the world as a whole should move and in and stop it. Sadly, we don’t, but I guess executing those who did such things is a good consolation prize. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/57 "2009-07-08T18:26:21Z")
Sobibor of course was destroyed and razed to the ground after the escape in pique or to destroy evidence. Were the other camps destroyed? I guess they just quit sending people there before the end and killed everyone who was left. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/58 "2009-07-08T18:41:44Z")
Thank you for that post **Gam Zeh Yaavor** , as it prompted me to read about each camp (albeit on Wikipedia). It’s been quite a while since I was educated about the Nazi Holocaust, met survivors, went to the DC museum, etc. and even then we were only given part of the story (because of time constraints and because we hadn’t been taught that much about world history at that point). Every photo and every description on those pages moved me. I did not know about the Sobibor uprising or the rebellion in Treblinka. Oh good, I’m crying now. Several of the pages list the people in command and their fates – some were executed soon after, some have never been found. ---
**Author:** ![Gam\_Zeh\_Yaavor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3e96dc/32.png) [@Gam\_Zeh\_Yaavor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gam_Zeh_Yaavor)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2009, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/59 "2009-07-08T18:43:04Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Sobibor of course was destroyed and razed to the ground after the escape in pique or to destroy evidence. Were the other camps destroyed? I guess they just quit sending people there before the end and killed everyone who was left. The true death camps ceased operations by the end of 1943. To the best of my knowledge, the other Operation Reinhard camps were dismantled in 1942-43 in Sonderaktion 1005, which was a massive cover-up effort. ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2009, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817/60 "2009-07-09T01:23:33Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I presume the Israelis got the ones the Nuremberg trials didn’t. > [Simon Wiesenthal](http://www.kintera.org/site/pp.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=242614)and all that. The Nuremberg trials and Wiesenthal only went after the very top leadership. Did someone else prosecute the thousands similarly situated to Demjanjuk? If they did, it would make sense to go after Demjanjuk too, but I don’t recall that they did. **Gam Zeh Yaavor** makes a better point in arguing that Sobibor and Treblinka were crueler places than some of the other camps, but still there must have been hundreds of guards and other “facilitators” at those two camps alone. I just don’t see what distinguishes Demjanjuk from the others, if he was in fact a guard. He was thought to have been the so-called Ivan the Terrible, who was specifically known to have committed many incredibly cruel acts, but an Israeli court acquitted him of that charge despite years of effort by prosecutors. It’s especially puzzling that Germany is going to such lengths to prosecute a non-German, considering you probably couldn’t walk a mile in Berlin in 1960 without passing a death camp guard. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-nazi-war-criminal-to-be-tried/501817.md?page=4)