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Should We Continue to Hunt Nazis from the Holocaust?
Whenever I am confronted with the horrors of the Holocaust, I experience great sorrow and loss. Even though I had no family members die in that event, I feel connected to the 6 million Jews who died, and the other 6 million who also died at the hands of the Nazis. But we are approaching the time when few Nazis are still alive. And I’m beginning to question the purpose of hunting them out, putting them on trial, and punishing them for their horrendous acts.
My ambivalence arose with the recent trial of a woman, Irmgard Furchner, who was a secretary at the Stutthof concentration camp from June 1943 to April 1945:
The case against Furchner relies on German legal precedent established in cases over the past decade that anyone who helped Nazi death camps and concentration camps function can be prosecuted as an accessory to the murders committed there, even without evidence of participation in a specific crime.
As part of the trial, the horror of the camp was described by witnesses who testified:
While it is unclear if Furchner will be found guilty [she was found guilty], her trial shed light on the experiences of Stutthof survivors like Risa Silbert, 93, who testified via teleconference in August.
‘Stutthof was hell,’ she said.
‘We had cannibalism … people were hungry and they cut up the corpses and they wanted to take out the liver.’
The camp’s conditions claimed many lives, but they also ran gas chambers and had facilities for shooting prisoners.
No one but a Holocaust denier would discount the data from the Holocaust, yet at this point in history, I find myself questioning whether these Nazis should still be hunted to send a message to those Nazis still alive. Many of them have been discovered to have died. Others are too ill to participate in a trial. The survivors are expected to testify and relive the horrors they experienced 70 or more years ago. Some prosecutors believe that their victims are willing to appear at trial in order to achieve justice, but I wonder how many are tortured for months or years as they relive their memories.
In the case of Furchner, she was tried in juvenile court due to her age at the time of her service. She was sentenced to two years’ suspended sentence, the longest juvenile sentence without jail time; she will probably return to her retirement home. Conflicting opinions about these hunts and trials continue:
‘We can’t just let it stand that the German judiciary says participating in the Holocaust is not a crime,’ Mr. Müller says. ‘If two or three more people were to be convicted — they don’t actually have to go to prison, they can stay in their old people’s homes — it would have a symbolic effect.’
This debate comes as part of a continuing discussion about prosecuting the aging participants in the Holocaust.
‘The advanced age of the often-frail suspects has brought forth sympathy among some in Germany, raising questions of whether it is just to pursue prosecutions now after having let them live out so many years in peace,’ Melissa Eddy writes for the New York Times. But the general sentiment in the country, Ms. Eddy writes, is that Nazi crimes are ‘better pursued late than never.’
A number of questions come up for me: If you’re going to put elderly Nazis through a trial and then put them in a retirement home with a suspended sentence, what’s the point? Should we be putting victims through testimonies that will cause them suffering and will offer very little solace or peace? Are we better off putting the funds used to search for Nazis and running trials to creating museums, memorials, teaching materials and curricula to teach about the Holocaust?
What do you think?
Published in History
IMHO, it’s not about the last Nazis, but the next group. Akin to “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
I think it’s valid. The desired effect is the conventional wisdom that genocidaires and so forth “will be hunted down any place in the world, any time — forever. Let there be no solace but the grave, and no shield from notoriety. Sure, Fraulein Furchner was a minor functionary and literally a minor at the time — other minors took greater risks to pursue worthier options.
Throwing a ninety-plus-year-old woman in a stone cell would be cruel. Hanging a label on her in her retirement seems just, or even generous. She is not long for the plan regardless.
Good points, BDB. But our memories seem so short–once we’ve caught the ones left over, then what? Can’t the same message come from other efforts? I wonder if our future Nazis will give a lot of thought to those who were hunted down; they’ll be pre-occupied with their own agenda. If that rationale were true, no one would kill people in the U.S. because they were afraid of the death penalty. (I’m for the death penalty, but not because it’s a deterrent–I don’t think it is.)
She was 14 years old. I have a hard time believing a 14 year old had much of a hand or did much to perpetrate the crimes. She pretty much did what she was told in a typist capacity. To try her as if she’s as guilty as mass murderers cheapens the sentences of those who deserved to be sentenced and hung. And if there is found to be living some 98 year old or 104 year old who was a guard who engaged in torture and murder it cheapens and throws into question any charges against them as well. The holocaust should not become a bludgeon or a tool the way race is in the US.
I must tell you this is a fascinating point, Glen. Hadn’t considered it. The law was only recently changed (the last 10 years, I believe).
Ehhh.. hard to say. As a general principle, sure. Unless…well, as pointed out above, the ex-Nazi was 14 or maybe as old as 15 at the time he/she committed the crime. Also, any signs of repentance and remorse need to be considered. Somebody like Eichmann? Makes me glad there´s a Hell and the Holy One is just. None of those thrice-accursed [COC violations repeated] gets off the planet alive.
My real frustration on the essential moral point here, i.e. how long do we prosecute those who committed atrocities after the atrocities have ceased, is that we are not doing the same to the Commies from the Stalin era. Or Pol Pot and Idi Amin´s thugs.
I am in the middle of reading Resistance: The Underground War Against Hitler, 960 pages of meticulously sourced accounts. While the bravery of so many and the craven collaboration by so many others are both astonishing, I am taken aback reading about many, many instances of vicious reprisals, especially in the East, taken by the Germans against innocent civilian populations. These men, women and children, who had no connection with any resistance, were not members of any of the targeted groups in the Nazi racialist hierarchy.
The Germans might massacre an entire village’s population and burn the houses to the ground in reprisal for some action by some unseen and unknown resisters.
Yes, these are war crimes, but all the attention is on staging trials like that described in the OP. I feel there are many others who were far more guilty of serious crimes than an old lady who, as a teen, did secretarial work as she was told.
Ed. to amend age attribution
Hunt them all down and kill them. But don’t stop there, we have doctors doing horrible experiments on children in America. We have doctors that blocked Covid treatments and hid vaccine side-effects. I want them on trial too. As for the cost, make the German people pay.
Probably, to answer your question. Still, I wonder at times if we are running out of real nazis directly involved in the Holocaust, and now moving on to any German who wore a uniform . . .
I’m not sure the “cruelty” of throwing the nazi into a stone cell would outweigh what she participated in.
The article linked in the OP gives her age as 96 in 2021. Simple arithmetic shows she was born in 1925. She started her work at the camp in 1943. Again, simple arithmetic gives an age of 18 (maybe 17 depending on her exact birth date).
Where did you get that she was 14?
All just criminal justice systems should be primarily based on retribution. Once we’ve caught the last Nazi, we prosecute them for their crimes. Even if it is just to throw them back to where we found them. To make them face their accsusers, to be judged, and sentenced fulfills a moral duty their victims, and to the society as whole.
Color me shocked.
We should be though.
Too late. Too late.
She was 17 to 19. Still doesn’t make her a Nazi, but she wasn’t a little kid. Plenty of men in the armed forces of every army in that conflict were her age. I agree that people with no or next to no actual responsibility should not be equated with the real murderers.
Fact is, there is no “we”, in some world sense, prosecuting them. The reason for the unequal treatment is simple: Germany will cooperate with Nazi trials, whereas Russia will not cooperate with trials of former Communists.
Fascists are literal minded. If they’re hating on people who aren’t Jewish they won’t see the connection to their own beliefs and actions.
Yup. We didn´t bomb Moscow in to rubble and try the men who had run the Gulags and torture chambers back in 89-91.
These things tend more and more to give me a bad taste. Especially someone who was a typist (if that’s accurate). And as far as being “symbolic,” any person who has Nazi-type thoughts isn’t paying attention to this case, or any other case like it.
Susan has asked a very interesting question. Perhaps the prosecution should be seen as a reminder that certain lessons should not be forgotten, the punishment might be a different matter.
I’m reminded of a post that I wrote in 2018 about the internment of American Japanese citizens during WWII. One quote stands out concerning the edicts of the racial determination of being Japanese:
Some things should not be forgotten.
You can click on the link for the entire post.
I’m sure I don’t know the answer in every case, but I think David Gelernter offers some wise insight in his book “Drawling Life”. He says that pursuing justice is how we keep faith with the dead. It isn’t about deterrence (which is great if it works that way) but really about justice for the victims and mercy for their surviving families.
Having said that, I think justice also demands, at some level, proportionality. (e.g. We don’t dole out capital punishment for shop-lifting.). So whatever this woman’s punishment, it should be proportional to her own actions, and not bloated merely because of its proximity to the monstrous actions of others. (FWIW, I know none of the specifics of her case.)
As to Nazis, at this point in time there better be actual crime, not just “was in or near the camps at the time”.
I don’t understand why Nazis are seen as the epitome of evil, but communists get a pass.
What about the kid who worked at the gas station in the village? He sold gasoline to Nazis!
The guilt gets a little thin at some point.
Just a wild guess, but I think the difference is that the Germans were meticulous about record-keeping so their crimes were and are relatively easily documented (plus, the Nazis were rather proud of their “achievements”), while the communists seem adept at destroying the evidence of their vile actions because, after all, they’re building a New Man and a new world so what difference does the past make?
I suspect it’s because of the numbers in a limited period of time. Also their method for gassing the Jews and all the other prisoners. And also, the Jews are the ones who keep the memory alive; who will do that for those who died with the communists? It raises an interesting question: if the Jews didn’t work so hard to keep the horrible memory alive, would we still be talking about it?
The Germans purposely destroyed a lot of records as the walls closed in, but, being Germans, they made a lot of carbon copies too. Pulling the records back together has taken Herculean effort.
I share your ambivalence! This has crossed my mind too, but I always walk away thinking to myself it’s not for me to opine. If there are Jews who feel that justice is still warranted, then it’s not my place to disagree. I remember reading about this woman too. It’s not clear to me how direct her work actually led to deaths. Obviously she did perform some work that kept the concentration camp functioning. What would constitute justice here? She’s already had a lifetime of shame. One would think that after all these years her heart has accepted the evil of her participation. Perhaps just the public display of her name and allegations is enough punishment for her age. Again it’s not for me to opine on this.
I just feel so overwhelmed by all the suffering around us, past and present. Those of you who may feel the same way, may we reach out to each other with comfort and caring.
Manny, I didn’t just write this post for other Jews. You, as a religious person, are more than entitled to share your thoughts. In fact, even non-religious people may have a perspective, and I want to hear it, too. I’ve so appreciated comments so far, their intelligence, ambivalence, or thoughts on one side or the other. These are the kinds of questions I like to clarify for myself at this point in my life, and you are all helping me do it. Even expressing your ambivalence.
Where did you see she was 14? The article says she is 96 now. 1945 was 77 years ago. That would have made her 19 at the time.
The age of majority might have been 21 at the time.