The Auschwitz bookkeeper

[daveinprague]

I don't feel the comparison to Eichmann is valid, as there was a clear difference between their administration duties and therefore involvement in the holocaust. Eichmann was in charge of the department for Jewish affairs and oversaw the get up Jewish ghettos and then moved on to the movement of Jews to the concentration camps, and personally overseeing the transportation of Hungarian Jews following the invasion of Hungry.

I would suggest that the guilt between the two is polarized, and probably explains why the Israel Mossad were willing to capture Eichmann in Argentina and bring him back for trial and secured a death sentence against him.

Yes the current conviction was secured on an administrator but one who was not directly involved in the ordering or organization of the terrible war crimes.

I disagree. This individual was on the ramp where life and death was decided, compounded by theft. As the judge stated, he was a part of the murder machine in a death camp. No, he didnt personally kill. His sentence reflects that.

 

[Nigella's Cream Pie]

There must be thousands of surviving members of not just the SS but the German and also Russian armies who committed murder, should they be pursued?

They probably can't be, due to lack of evidence whereas documentation exists of the guy working at Auschwitz.

It was also revealed that he wanted out - but requests to transfer to the front were refused.

Just as a follow up, I've found out that only German Army leaders have been pursued. The Nuremberg Trials exonerated all German soldiers and very few of the Red Army have been prosecuted, despite thousands of civilians being murdered in the East by both armies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes

 

[Dandyman]

I have no sympathy with this man but post-war Germany has a history of prosecuting junior and middle rank war criminals while quietly letting the major criminals back into public life.

Hans Josef Maria Globke for example was Director of the Federal Chancellory of West Germany between 1953 and 1963 and one of Konrad Adenauer's closest advisers.

In November 1932, about two months before right-wing parties made Hitler chancellor, Globke wrote a set of rules to make it harder in Prussia for Germans of Jewish ancestry to change their last names into less recognizably Jewish names..

He helped to formulate the Enabling Act of 1933, the law that effectively gave Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers. He was also the author of the law of 10 July 1933 concerning the dissolution of the Prussian State Council, and of further legislation which 'co-ordinated' all Prussian parliamentary bodies.

He co-authored the official legal commentary on the new Reich Citizenship Law, one of the Nuremberg Laws which revoked the citizenship of German Jews. Globke also served as chief legal advisor in the Office for Jewish Affairs in the Ministry of Interior, headed by Adolf Eichmann.

In 1938, Globke was appointed Ministerialrat (Deputy Director) due to his "extraordinary efforts in drafting the law for the Protection of the German Blood".

In 1965 the Brown Book: War criminals and Nazis in the Federal Republic—in government, business, administration, the army, the judiciary and science was published.
.
In its first edition, the Brown Book listed the SS ranks and former Nazi membership of 1,800 business leaders, politicians and senior officials of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the third edition in 1968, more than 2,300 individuals were listed—including 15 ministers and state secretaries, 100 generals and admirals of the Bundeswehr, 828 judges, state prosecutors and top judicial officers, 245 leading officials of the foreign office, and 297 senior police officers and employees of the intelligence service. The veracity of the data was supported with detailed statements and quotations from legal, military and Gestapo archives, often accompanied by copies of incriminating documents.

 

[lawros left foot]

The defensive of"I was only following orders"was kicked out of court by the Judges in the 1964 trials of the Treblinka death camp guards, one of whom, was an administrator, who appears to have done a similar job as this character, only got 7 years.