Seems to be a no-brainer. There’s no legal choice in the matter, and attitudes are therefore irrelevant. I’d deport her because there’s no other option.
Deportion, yes. Trial for war crimes, no. I don’t think that anyone should be completely pardoned for crimes they committed of that magnitude, 60 years removed or no, but lying on your visa application is still not permissible in the U.S. However, it does seem that she’s made appropriate “amends” for her crimes, and has shown that she may have been doing them for financial or patriotic reasons rather than because she ideologically believed in them. Is she innocent? No. Is she guilty? I think probably not by the standard of reasonable doubt.
I find it very hard to believe that anyone could join the SS and work as a camp guard, with or without an attack dog, without being a member of the Nazi Party. And any truly decent, innocent soul would have found it absolutely intolerable working there, and would have quit, had a nervous breakdown, whatever – just to get the hell out of it.
The greatest postwar defilement here, though, wasn’t her being here in the US, but her deceptive marriage to a German Jew ignorant of her past. If anyone should have had the power to forgive her, it was him… but she never confessed, so he couldn’t. And nor should we.
It’s hard to know if she’s a legitimate war criminal based on the article. She seems to feel she was somehow coerced into something, though she volunteered for the job. Tough to make any sense of that, and hence hard to know what, if any, mitigating circumstances there were.
IMHO this is a very pertinent part of the argument. I don’t feel that you can really try to make up for your mistakes, without first facing the direct consequences of your actions.
I tend to agree with Johnny L.A.. There is a question of whether deportation is a proportionate response to having lied on her immigration about handling dogs, yes FOR THE NAZIS.
I mean, how realistic is this?
An affront? Quietly getting on with her anonymous life for 60 years. Who was to know, let alone be ‘affronted’?
Clearly there is a selective enforcement problem at work here too, it smacks a little of partisanship. For example are former Axis officials similarly pursued, Italians & Finns? And what of the Japanese. I’d be a little uncomfortable if the policy targetted immigrants by ethnicity, which it seems to.
Plus, several responses to the OP have said, “well, she lied on her immigration.” Is deportation an appropriate response to every single lie, no matter how far in the past? I don’t know what questions were asked of post-war immigrants, but suppose someone omitted a family history of TB: Should US immigration be combing the files, vetting people then deporting them 60 years later, as proven liars? I can’t imagine that happenning. So why this?
The idea that someone who assisted in killing Jews could live freely in the USA is an affront. Look at the pictures in my link.
From the article:
I just want to take a moment to absorb this. She didn’t tell her Jewish husband that she’d been an SS guard in a death camp, because she was embarrassed. Yes, I can see how that would have been really, really embarrassing.
Cite that this woman commited attrocities? The article in the OP doesn’t mention anything like that.
To me, she’s a war criminal and deserves to be punished.
I advocate immediate deportation without any consideration of extenuating circumstances of any immigrant, legal or illegal, who uses a phony or stolen Social Security number. This isn’t nearly as serious an offense as being a guard at a Nazi death camp. If I’m going to be that hard on them, why should I cut this woman any slack?
So she said, but assuming that the author of the article isn’t incorrect about her having been an “SS guard,” then she’s lying. All members of the SS were Nazis.
Absolutely. Claiming to be SS without being a Nazi is like claiming to be a Jesuit without being a Catholic.*
(*I absolutely do not mean to suggest that Catholicism is comparable to Nazism or that the Jesuits are comparable to the SS.)
Deport her.
I’d like to hear more of her story, though. In particular, I’d like to hear about her husband’s war experiences, how and when they met, and so on. This is a pretty big secret she kept from him for 50 years.
Why didn’t she say anything to anyone? Why especially didn’t she tell her husband? This is not someone who has fully atoned for her actions. Would we accept a person who is later found to have provided material or logistical support for Al-Qaeda in the US even if they keep it secret for over 40 years? Until she faces any charges against her for her actions she has not atoned for them.
I’ve heard of holiday makers being arrested, detained and kicked back out of the US for making a mistake on the Immigration form, why should this woman be any different? You are asked if you are, or have ever been, a member of … with a list of organisations
Honest to pete, I think she needs to be punished just for what she did to her husband, hiding that from him all these years. If I found out my spouse had been an SS guard, I would be beside myself, and I’m not even Jewish. If I was, I can’t imagine how I would feel. Murderous, probably. Of course, you can’t deport her for that. But, if she lied on her visa, she should be deported anyway, and I believe that it is US policy not to allow people who worked at the camps to live in the US. She must be deported.
Yeah, not sure if “embarassed” is the right word there. She should be embarassed if her husband found out she used to be a stripper. For him
to have found out she was party to his ancestors being killed…
I think though it would depend on how active she was- if she was just doing
her job, hated it, was against it, but thought if she didn’t do it she would be
killed or whatever, then I say let her stay. But if she was gung ho, loving clocking in every day, or clocking in early and staying late, then I say deport her. But since I’m sure her timecards and all were lost in the bombings, then who knows?
But I don’t think age should be a factor. If you found out the old man who lived next door to you was the Zodiac Killer, would you let him off because he’s old?
My understanding is that the SS was an elite outfit, and membership was entirely voluntary. However, I’m open to correction on the point.
Well, I guess I was wrong. It appears that Gunter Grass was drafted into the Waffen SS during the war.