Nazi Bitch Discovered: Hopefully Will be Executed Soon

Bullshit.

Why would she be prosecuted? She's over 80 years old, so she's going to die soon anyway. Let sleeping dogs lie.

Yeah that'd be real cathartic.

The reason she will be prosecuted is because it sends out a clear warning, they hope, to War Criminals in general. A "you will never be safe" kind of thing.

I wonder if anyone said that to her regarding the attack dog she used.

Huh. Ian McKellan doesn't look anything like her.

It must have been weird when she watched SCHINDLER'S LIST with her husband. "That's not at all how the inside of the crematoriums looked. I mean I love you."

What did Ann Coulter do or say this time?

Dyanne Thorne should play her in the movie version.

Except of course that the US refuses to ratify the treaty of the International Criminal Court, which should prosecute just such War Criminals. In fact the US has cut aid and development funding for many countries cooperating with the ICC, and has threatened to use its UN veto unless US citizens were exempted from ICC prosecution. That's what I call a clear warning.

Good ol' America: we get to tell everyone else what to do, but don't you dare try to hold us to our own standards. Cause, y'know, we're better than the rest of you anyway.

This is the dumbest story of the year. Thanks for posting this nonsense. Who the fuck is going to get closure out of this? No one.

Just a hypothetical (and I'm not necessarily arguing for punishment - I'm honestly not sure where I stand):

If this were a guy who was a serial rapist/killer in the 40s, same age, same lack of ability to do further harm, where would you stand? Same conditions stand - he was in a loving marriage to a person he might have otherwise harmed (a woman in his case, a Jew in hers), he stopped committing the acts decades ago, etc.

At what point do you cease to be responsible for your past actions?

Never.

The question is really, "At what point would punishing the criminal serve no purpose?"

Here's the difference. The article is crap, and doesn't give us any information.

So she walked a dog around a camp. Big fucking deal. It doesn't tell us that in the 10 months she was there if she even knew what was going on. Did this chick pull a lever and gas anyone? Did she go along with orders to torture or kill anyone in those camps?

Without any more info, judgement needs to shut the fuck up.

So should we just punish any and everyone in the German army during WW2?

Talk about fucking Nazis....

There's that too. I knew two former Nazis growing up. One was an infantryman, the other a quartermaster or supply clerk or something. Truly the embodiment of evil in the 20th century.

Hell, a friend of mine grew up in Jewish Montreal, attended Jewish schools, etc. Even he was taught that most German soldiers were just poor slobs who had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

Its a tough one.

If she was really continuing the Nazi ways, she'd hardly be married to a Jewish gentleman would she?

Hiding her past from him could be either deception or guilt - which one makes a big difference here. The article is bullshit, it leaves out all the necessary facts to condemn her or save her.

The fact is, what message would actually be sent out by damning this 83 yr old woman?

This is true. Here's a better one.

Well, I assume that's what the trial is going to be about.

No, but I don't think a trial for someone who, as an adult, decided to become involved with the camps as late as 1944 is unreasonable. If, as the article I linked above implies, she was coerced into that role and simply, as you said "walked the dog around the camp," I hope that she'll be found innocent of any wrongdoing. But there was simply no way that a German in 1944 could have any illusions about what was being done to the Jews. If she willingly signed up, she's culpable, nice, old lady or not.

Holding someone accountable for the actions of their past is in the same class as deliberate, planned ethnic cleansing? That's a fascinatingly flawed and offensive comparison. Maybe we should reserve that word for when it actually means something?

She quite obviously wasn't. But what you're saying means that, if I keep to my promise of not killing people starting now, in 50 years or so, I'm no longer responsible for those 20 people I killed last year and my 82-year-old self shouldn't even be troubled with a trial.

Didn't realize you were on the jury. The article is skimpy on facts probably because those facts aren't available and won't be until the trial starts.

Not really sure. But when you phrase it that way, what message would actually be sent by anyone being convicted of any crime? At what point does a criminal act become not punishable?

I know DaveB... the Nazi comment was a joke... albeit, not a good one.

Probably not this German, but possibly others. Even today in the internet age there are many government activities we have precious little knowledge of.

Wow...Just posting an opinion on this opinion page.

My point concerned the title of this thread. Executing an 84 yr old woman doesnt make me feel like justice has been served, it raises more issues.

Im not singing for the Nazis, but i know people do things they regret - and I believe she wouldnt have been able to rebel, nor would she have wanted to. They simply didnt have the knowledge that we do now about what Nazism was doing, for them it was just uniting their country and making themselves a world power.

My feeling is she slipped thorugh the cracks and now is too old to do anyone any harm. Incarcerate her, put her under house arrest, question her, whatever - but execution isnt an option.

Age and gender does not grant innocence in this case, but it should affect her treatment....sorry if that offends anyones deep seeded American Bloodlust....

You should read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Willin...e=UTF8&s=books

It's all about how the average German/Nazi had ample opportunity to refuse participation in the Final Solution and chose to willingly and whole-heartedly kick in.

92,000 Jewish and Gypsie (and others) women and children died at Ravensbruck during the second World War. Here are some quotes from wikipedia:

I don't see letting this one go. If she's made amends, I'm sure that God will be glad to see her.

I see no reason at all to press charges against this woman.

Age does not exempt you from SHIT. I really don't understand the "Oh, what purpose will it solve now that they're old?" mentality. It serves the purpose of justice. Justice in it's purest form is blind to EVERYTHING: race, religion and AGE. That's purpose enough for anyone.

Try the bitch. Open her past up for the world to see, and if it stinks bad enough she can regret her actions in a jail cell.

There's no reason to put her up on public display and humiliate her. People do bad things in times of desperation. It's been shown over and over again that many Germans during WW2, despite knowing what was happening with the holocaust, turned a blind eye to the proceedings. It's like when our government bombs a bunch of brown people halfway across the world. Sure, we might know about it, but what do we do? Keep giving money to the military.

You are a joke of a human being.

If she was in a concentration camp and didn't notice any crimes against humanity, then she may be retarded, and I'm against executing the retarded.

If you weren't expecting interaction, you should have started a blog.

I'm not sure from where you got this idea, but, in 1944, the intended fate of the Jews was not really a mystery to Germans or to much of the world. The death camps had already been running for about two years, the concentration camps for over a decade. Even if one might argue that a good portion of the German citizenry didn't know about the death camps (a shakey proposition, I'd say), it was quite clear that fascist rule meant the elimination of the Jews.

Note that I'm not criticizing just your opinion now, but the facts on which it is based. You're absolutely wrong.

"Deep-seated" is the term you're looking for, I believe, and, Overlord aside, I don't think there's much bloodlust going on in this thread.

If I recall correctly, you used to be a compassionate individual. Whoops.

Oddly enough, you'd think that the lawyer (Overlord) would want to hear all the facts before passing sentence.

Do you know what happened in the Holocaust? Seriously, I am wondering this because if you think "humiliating" this lady is worse than what happened at Ravensbruck, you're even dumber than I thought.

I never once said that persecuting her would be anything even remotely resemblant of what happened in the Holocaust. I simply mean that it's over and done with. It's been 60 years, and destroying an old woman isn't going to bring about any sort of justice or closure. It's nothing beyond revenge.

And it doesn't get served much colder than the incarceration of an octogenarian.

I say leave it to a jury, but if she's gulity of war crimes she is subject to the full extent of the law.

Guilt doesn't dissipate over time.

Just as anger shouldn't fester.

WHat does it have to do with anger? Just because someone can hide means we should let them get away? Is bin Laden off the hook yet?

How is this anything beyond an angry reaction? She is no longer capable of really harming anyone. It's doubtful that anyone she potentially could've harmed is around any longer. Hell, if you want to go down the road of pulling aside guilty parties any amount of time later, then why don't we find Harry Truman's family and put them on trial for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by proxy?

Wow. I want to go create an award for "Worst Analogy Ever" with that Truman remark. It fails on so many levels. It's just beautiful.

And there's no statute of limitations on murder or being an accomplice to murder. Furthermore, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while ugly and tragic, were part of the war on Japan, a war that was clearly defined and declared and ongoing for four years. We didn't drop an A-Bomb on Japan because we wanted to rid the world of Japanese people. Finally, no one is holding the relatives of this woman responsible. It was her actions and she's being held accountable to those actions.

But yes, other than those reasons which are obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense, your argument is bulletproof.

All the major powers were guilty of some serious war crimes during WWII, and this is certainly the blackest mark on our record.

So...what, the concentration/death camps, while ugly and tragic, were not official business of state supposedly supporting the war effort?

And I spoke of Truman's relatives only because he's no longer alive. What do you want I should do, pick another of the thousands of individuals who did something despicable over the last century?

No, the concentration camps were there for horrific ethnic genocide, not "supporting the war effort". Stop being such a jackass.

I'm far from an expert on the matter, but some of you seem to have virtually no idea what the holocaust was about.

The holocaust isn't comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it wasn't "part of a war effort," in any real sense. The initial rounding up of Jews happened way before there were rumblings of military activity. It was a rallying point around this convenient scapegoat that had put Hitler in charge and solidified those nice, nationalist, expansionist feelings among the German people who'd been given a bum deal at Versailles and been hit hard by depression. But make no mistake - this was peacetime stuff. It was the beginning of militarization for the Germans, who continued to be aggressors, not merely participants, throughout.

This sense of nationalism and anti-semitism were inextricably and visibly linked - it's not as if it was some sort of secret side-effect, and average Germans were just ignoring it in the interest of nationalist and expansionist yearnings. It was a selling point for many of them. All Germans might not have known how far the Nazis would go in their anti-Jewish policies, but it's a major misconception to believe that any were blissfully unaware of where things were heading, generally (or, in the case of 1944, where they already were).

Comparable? No. Nevertheless an appalling massacre of civillians? Yes.

So were the Native American genocide, the Spanish Inquisition, and countless other historical events that aren't particularly germane to the conversation. We can play "name horrific events in human history" all day, but I'm not sure what the point would be.

Truman's bombing of Japan may not have been the most humane solution ever devised by mankind, but it was an attempt to put an end to a longstanding war that would have continued to yield more and more casualties. Now, let's stop a minute and think about what the Nazis were attempting to do with the Jews.

I used to wonder why there was this concern among Jews who had been alive during the Holocaust that future generations would somehow forget it. It always seemed inconceivable to me when I heard them say this, but now I'm starting to get it. Maybe it hasn't been forgotten, per se, but some of you sure don't seem to "get it" entirely, either.

This thread has made me think that too, DaveB. I always thought that there was so much attention paid to the Holocaust, but I guess it wasn't enough.

Fuck it. I'm not bothering anymore.

What does that have to do with this issue?

It's hard to imagine any Americans forgetting about the Holocaust (even if there weren't a new film every other year), because it is an extremely influential factor in shaping US policy toward Israel and its neighbors.