German prosecutors charge 100-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard with Holocaust crimes

[Sannhet]

Well, they've finally done it. They've now criminally charged someone who has passed his hundredth birthday for the Holocaust. Soon all remaining Holocaust show-trials will have to be to the 100+ set, as time marches on. But these are continuing into the 2020s.

100-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard charged with Holocaust atrocities

By Claudia Otto and Amy Woodyatt, CNN
February 10, 2021
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/10/euro ... index.html

Berlin (CNN) --- German prosecutors have charged a 100-year-old former SS concentration camp guard with aiding and abetting the murder of 3,518 people.

The man is charged with "knowingly and willfully" aiding and abetting the murder of prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, from January 1942 to February 1945, according to the prosecutor's office in Neuruppin, Brandenburg.

The man's name has not been released, in accordance with Germany's privacy laws.

The charges include involvement in the shooting of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942, and aiding and abetting the murder of prisoners through the use of the poison gas Zyklon B, as well as other shootings and the killing of prisoners by creating and maintaining hostile conditions in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

The prosecution considers the man fit to stand trial despite his advanced age

An estimated 6 million Jewish people were killed in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Also killed were hundreds of thousands of Roma people and people with physical or learning disabilities.

Always curious to see how they characterize what the Holocaust "was" in articles like this. Here it is Six Million Jews + Unspecified hundreds of thousands of Roma + Unspecified numbers of people with "learning disabilities."

What happened to the "Five Million Others"?

__________________

I'll save you the effort of reading the full article in search of anyone pointing out the absurdity of trotting out a one-hundred-year-old man for a political show-trial. There is not even one line in the article like that.

These ongoing trials are important for the legitimacy of the international liberal order as we know it, which is why the trials keep happening (absurdly, even into the 2020s), and which is why there is a "conspiracy of silence" in the media of criticizing these show-trials even when it's sooo easy to do so (a 100-year-old!).

(Imagine the cacophony of criticism and mockery if Donald Trump had opened treason trials against obscure, elderly Communist Party members for alleged crimes in the 1930s/40s.)

[Hektor]

The charges include involvement in the shooting of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942, and aiding and abetting the murder of prisoners through the use of the poison gas Zyklon B, as well as other shootings and the killing of prisoners by creating and maintaining hostile conditions in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

I thought they were over homicidal gas chamber allegations for Sachsenhausen.

How does "creating and maintaining hostile conditions" work? They should be careful. All that stuff can be used against them one day.

[Lamprecht]

Was shooting Soviet POWs actually a crime, given that the Soviets did not sign the 1929 Geneva Convention?
What exactly was the extent of his involvement in this claimed shooting?
When will the American soldiers that committed a shooting of surrendered German [and Hungarian] POWs at Dachau be tried for that war crime? A couple of them might be centenarians that can be wheeled out of their nursing homes and put on trial.

[borjastick]

Hopefully he'll work out the odds and realise that his time is probably over so will make a statement like this -

'I'm one hundred years old. I've seen much in my life but I never saw a jew get gassed because there weren't any gas chambers. It's one big lie to besmirch the character of Germany and its people. So go fuck yourselves and fuck the horse you rode into town on'.

[Vukdar]

Hopefully he'll work out the odds and realise that his time is probably over so will make a statement like this -

'I'm one hundred years old. I've seen much in my life but I never saw a jew get gassed because there weren't any gas chambers. It's one big lie to besmirch the character of Germany and its people. So go fuck yourselves and fuck the horse you rode into town on'.

Maybe a little harmonica even.

https://youtu.be/BgkZP2qmq7I

[Sannhet]

When will the American soldiers that committed a shooting of surrendered German [and Hungarian] POWs at Dachau be tried for that war crime? A couple of them might be centenarians that can be wheeled out of their nursing homes and put on trial.

This comparison is too big. This 100-year-old Nazi trial is, at least in the mechanics of it, a local trial, pushed (in theory and in the public eremony of it) by the prosecutor of Neuruppin, a typical small city in Brandenburg where he lives, not some kind of national Nazi-Hunting Tribunal.

The equivalent would if the prosecutor in Leflore County, Mississippi, dragged up a 100-year-old man who had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1930s/40s and created great fanfare by charging him with "creating and maintaining hostile conditions" for Black Americans, and accessory to the death of Emmett Till (Leflore County, Mississippi, is the county where Emmett Till was killed). Something wild and brutally political like that but at local level.

(Come to think of it, I'm surprised this kind of trial hasn't happened in America, yet, given recent conditions. Show-trials for elderly members of the KKK. Even if no specific crime is known of, they could find a way.)

[Sannhet]

Continuing thoughts on why "they" (ostensibly the prosecutor in the city of Neuruppin, Brandenburg) are doing this:

Besides the obvious players in the Neuruppin 100-Year-Old Nazi case (the national level-Federal Republic of Germany 'regime,' the various international players, the ideological commitments of the Achtundsechziger and successors who are clearly interested in this as an ongoing ritual-cleansing), there really are local-specific political pressures in Brandenburg itself for why they would want to thrust a "Nazi" show-trial in the news:

In the most recent election of the Brandenburg state government [Landtag], September 1 2019 (the eighty-year anniversary of the invasion of Poland), the AfD took 23 of 88 seats, forcing a shaky coalition between the CDU, SPD, and Greens, who together only took 50 of 88 seats. The AfD is seen as having ties to Holocaust Revisionism and is now established as definitely the most successful party to the CDU's 'Right' since the the political-party system of the Federal Republic emerged in the 1950s. (In fact the main-line of the party is now very far to the Right, but maybe where the CDU itself was circa 1990 or 2000.)

The AfD's performance in Brandenburg was impressive and only beaten by its performance in Saxony and Thuringia. In the latter case the party is led by Bjoern Hoecke, who has given clear signals over the past five years that he is a Holocaust-disbeliever.

A 2019 survey showed about 60% of voters in Brandenburg had reasonably solid party-commitments and the other 40% shift from election to election without any firm commitment. The 60%, too, could shift, but much less likely. In Brandenburg, around 15% of Brandenburg voters are definite AfD votes. Therefore one-fourth of the party-committed electorate is solid AfD. That, also, before the polling error of "silent AfD supporters." The smae 2019 survey showed that in addition to these 15% solid-AfD'ers, 28% more said they would consider voting for AfD, for a total of 43% of the state population either "core AfD" or "lean/peripheral/possible AfD." Therefore there is a scenario in which, if the AfD were to max-out its vote-share in an election, that the AfD could democratically take control of the government in Brandenburg and several similar states. The role of local 'regime' forces is to make sure this never happens; trotting out a surviving Nazi guard is one strategy to keep the AfD out.

Note, that political analysis is all from before March 2020. With the "Corona-Panic" of 2020, which German-regime forces look to want to extend into mid-year 2021 at least, politics has rearranged. There has been a big shift back to the party that leads the government, which is the CDU. This always tends to happens when people believe a crisis is on. It's certainly happened in Germany, a very clear shift in polling towards the AfD since the Virus-Panic began in March 2020. With the national election coming (September 26, 2021), the CDU now looks very likely to maintain the Chancellorship. (The German 'regime' therefore also has a clear political incentive to keep up "Coronavirus Panic" conditions, which they have been reliably doing. The Virus-Panic has deflated the sails of the AfD and to an extent other parties that serve as protest-voter outlets including Linke, Greens, and even FDP.)

There are local incentives to keeping the Holocaust in the news, by any crazy means necessary.

[Wachtman]

In a real court of law, someone of 100 years of age would be considered an unreliable witness.

Persons over 90 years of age can easily be convinced to confirm witnessing anything: I remember when Ronald Reagan thought he had been an inmate at one of the German prison camps,

I have a friend, who's politically rather neutral, and goes with the flow of "Holocaust" narratives. I keep the revisionism fairly light with statements like; "How could you have murdered and cremated 40,000 persons in 3 weeks" or; " How could 100,00 corpses be buried under that dome" etc...?

At any rate, when I told her of this story, said replied; "Isn't it a little late?"
To which I replied; "You would think so."

I thought her question had a certain poignancy to it.

And I believe that the actions of this particular section of the German Public Prosecutor's Office are deplorable.

[Sannhet]

I have a friend, who's politically rather neutral, and goes with the flow of "Holocaust" narratives [...]

[W]hen I told her of this story, said replied; "Isn't it a little late?"

To which I replied; "You would think so."

How do you think she would respond if you then asked, in neutral tone: "Why do you think they're doing it?"

[Wachtman]

To Sannhet: I followed your promt, and asked her this question; "That trial of the prison guard is starting in Germany, what do you think of that?'
She said; "They're just trying to prove that nobody can get away with being a Nazi. Stupid, right?"
I replied; "I agree, one would think they have better things to spend their money on right now."

[Lamprecht]

In a real court of law, someone of 100 years of age would be considered an unreliable witness.

Not to mention the witness testimony is about an event that supposedly took place almost 80 years prior.