I know. We sit here from the comfort of our chairs tutting at someone who served in the German Army and either volunteered or was voluntold to guard a prison. What was he supposed to do, ask to be moved to the Eastern Front? Then he’d have likely died like over a million other German soldiers. Protest that the ordered executions of the prisoners was wrong and he wouldn’t stand for it? Then they might have executed one more person that day.
One element of a crime, even a terrible crime on this scale, is the prosecution should be forced to prove that the defendant had a viable other choice. Otherwise, his crimes were committed under duress.
He was supposed to… not be a concentration camp guard. This isn’t really a rough moral decision, he chose to participate in the holocaust and now he’s paying the price. If you think it’s unfair for him to get deported, just think about all the people he killed and how unfair it was that he chose to kill them.
RivkaChaya wrote: “He fired a whole lot of arrows at the side of a barn, and drew targets around some of them.“
What a wonderful image! I’ve never heard this before, but I’ll start using it.
It’s possible to put the toilet seat down after you’re finished with it and still be the worst president ever to hold the job, alive or dead, but thanks for the toilet seat. Is that what you want to hear?
The following orders defense was unsucessfully used by much higher level officers in the organization who realistically did have a choice. They likely could have resigned their commissions and were too old to be drafted, or they could have gotten themselves reassigned. There’s a massive difference between an officer around the rank of a General and a private ordered to guard a fence.
I think you’ll find that the IMT held to the principle that “superior orders” was a defense that might, in some instances, mitigate degree of culpability, but did not remove it.
Duress isn’t an defense for all crimes. Some, yes- if someone points a gun at me and orders me to steal a car, I can be excused because I committed the theft under duress. But there are requirements (both legal and moral) in using that defense and one of them is that the threatened harm must be greater than the harm caused by the crime - and this doesn’t meet that standard. The prison guard’s life is not worth more than the life of any of the prisoners- and therefore he won’t be excused for saving his life by assisting in ending theirs.
That sounds nice in theory but Nuremberg wasn’t followed up with strong international treaties and cooperation to intervene to stop genocides and prosecute war criminals in a timely fashion, hence the pattern just got repeated in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Burundi. Cambodia, Rwanda, Burma and the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere, so I’d say the “message” is pretty empty.
Again, it’s pretty easy to point fingers when we know the Nazis as a whole are proven to be synonymous with evil. But if you actually think about it, this guard had the choice of taking a principled stand and likely dying, and doing what he did, and living the last 74 years. I unfortunately have to admit I’d probably have done the same if the choice were put that way.
The main problem with your reasoning is, to the best of my knowledge, the Trawniki men were willing volunteers into the Waffen-SS. Do you have any evidence that Jakiw Palij was forced into service?
Actually, there are no recorded instances of German soldiers facing the death penalty for refusing to carry out execution orders against civilians. They could be punished however with demotion and transfers, so it would be hard to refuse and then continue with the same upward mobility as before. In addition, Wehrmacht and SS responsible for massacring civilians were given a very generous ration of alcohol, meat and cheese whenever possible. This combined with not wanting to let down their peers is (in my opinion) all that was necessary for them to commit their atrocities.
That being said, given how uncommon refusing orders appears to have been, and barring some ludicrous explanation such as “Germans are naturally predisposed to do wicked things!”, it seems reasonable to conclude that many on this board would have done the same in the same situation.
(First post on this forum by the way, hello everyone!)
Let’s get something straight: this man was not deported for Nazi war crimes. He was deported for falsifying his citizenship documentation. He lied when he applied for US citizenship. That’s why it was eventually taken away from him, and he was deported. The only relevance his war crimes have on the matter is the fact that he ended up in Germany, after 14 years of haggling over where he should go.
It’s my understanding that he does not qualify for German citizenship under current German laws, and I do not know how he came to be serving in the German military; but the fact remains that he did serve as such, and then lied about it when he applied to be a US citizen.
Strictly true, yes, but if he’d lied about something less significant then it almost certainly would never have come to this point. The lie is the legal pretext, but the reason for his deportation is his (alleged) war crimes.
If you commit a crime, then lie about it on your application, you can later be stripped of your citizenship. This has been done to lots of people, not just people who have committed war crimes. In fact, if you committed even a fairly petty crime in the US while you were a legal resident waiting for your opportunity to apply; something like, for example, unarmed petty theft, and you are found out, you can be stripped of citizenship if you lied and said you never committed a crime. Even misdemeanor drug use can get you into trouble if it comes to light after your paperwork goes through, and it turns out you lied about it.
Crimes committed in your home country generally have to be more serious, because some countries have pretty effed up justice systems, but you are better off telling immigration and naturalization abut the time you stole food because your children were starving, then lie about it, because if you lie, and it comes to light later, the lying itself can get you in more serious trouble than the initial crime.
The theory is that we don’t want people who will sign their names to things they know to be false, even if the falsehood is petty, because we want citizens who are too honorable to do that.
