Demjanjuk Convicted for Role in Nazi Death Camp

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Penguin

dubious evidence? As they could not prove that he killed someone himself, the whole trial was about assistance to murder in 28060 cases.


And this is what the prosecution did prove in the trial.

And no, a prison sentence for an old man is not a death penalty. He could likely die in prison but he won't be killed by the prison - but by his age.
Prison is not worse than an old people's home for him - 3 meals a day, no labour, medical assistance, visitation hours, etc.
He already survided 2 years in custody - longer than most people in Sobibor.

He was also imprisoned in Israel for 8 years previously.

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by CCIP

He was also imprisoned in Israel for 8 years previously.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean, if it is just an addition of fact or if you think that the 8 years were enough.
Given, one could argue to settle this with the 5 years that he got now. But it was a different charge back then.
I'm not happy with Israel's decision to release him, but they forbid double jeopardy. It's also forbidden here, but the german basic law says that it is forbidden to punish someone for the same crime twice. He was not punished in Israel, but released of the charges against a person who goes by the name "Iwan Martschenko" - as he most likely was not this person. He was not charged for his own role in the camp, so it was perfectly legal to charge him here.

[Penguin]

For people with black humour - I have the opinion laughter helps to cope with the most terrible things:

Non german speakers can click at 1:40.
This is from the time when the trial in Munich began and many people believed that he exaggerated his illness.

I'm curious about your opinions of this video.

[AVGWarhawk]

What's the difference? He is guilty whether ill or not. He needs to start serving his time.

[Seth8530]

You guys are all sick. He was a guard for crying out loud. If he was abritrarly shooting prisoners it would be a diferent story. Prove to me that he killed prisoners and im all for giving him jail time if he in fact has not already served that time under a different countries hands..

Prison guards are members of a military and therefore should be treated as any soldier folowing orders would be. .

What would be the consequences if he had not followed orders and went awol instead?

[MH]

Originally Posted by Seth8530

You guys are all sick. He was a guard for crying out loud. If he was abritrarly shooting prisoners it would be a diferent story. Prove to me that he killed prisoners and im all for giving him jail time if he in fact has not already served that time under a different countries hands..

Prison guards are members of a military and therefore should be treated as any soldier folowing orders would be. .

What would be the consequences if he had not followed orders and went awol instead?

So what prison did he VOLUNTIERED to serve at?
He could go to fight Russians on eastern front instead as such voluntary units existed but it wasn't so cozy there.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Seth8530

You guys are all sick. He was a guard for crying out loud. If he was abritrarly shooting prisoners it would be a diferent story. Prove to me that he killed prisoners and im all for giving him jail time if he in fact has not already served that time under a different countries hands..

Prison guards are members of a military and therefore should be treated as any soldier folowing orders would be. .

What would be the consequences if he had not followed orders and went awol instead?

A normal prison guard, you imply? Your lack of historic understanding is scaring. Have schools become this bad in our times?

KZs were not "prisons", but death factories, their purpose was not to imprison people but to annihilate them without traces or remains, sometimes making their remains available as a ressoruce for industrial production processes (body fats were tried as grease surrogates for machinery, hair was used like horse hair is used to tighten pipe threads, and skin was experimentally tried to be used for lamp screens); and the deputy guards recruited from the prisoners there were no guards like in a prison.

So-called "Hilfskräfte" in the KZs were no members of the military, nor the police like oyu imply (not that it matters, you can be member of a military and still become guilty by what you do in a KZ). They were prisoners who volunteered to guard and terrorise the other prisoners, carry out commands by the SS staff, they forced victims into the showers after a German senior had selected them, they carried out penalties, restrengthened the regulasr German camp guards and SS, and elped as deputies wherever needed, and as spies. Sometimes, civilians of conquered areas also volunteered to become as deputy guard, although they were no prisoners themselves. They were both hated and feared very much by the inmates, because they tended to be very brutal in order to win sympathy by their SS masters to protect their priviliges, and so they easily behaved even more brutal than the German guards themselves. The numerical relation between SS staff and such "Hilfskräfte" ranged from 1:5 to 1:8, which means, so a historian's agument, that without them the KZs in their known shape would have been unable to be operated with the given German guard numbers.

Demjanjuk, so is my understanding is not proven guilty of being Iwan the Terrible, a feared mass sdlaughterer in one of these camps. The Israelis released him because they had doubts he is. However, the German court, as I understand it, has not sentenced him for being Iwan the Terrible and being a mass murder, but for his general role as being a deputy guard. That is the reason why he was just given 5 years.

That's what I have understood from the news snippets I came about regarding this story.

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by Seth8530

You guys are all sick. He was a guard for crying out loud. If he was abritrarly shooting prisoners it would be a diferent story. Prove to me that he killed prisoners and im all for giving him jail time if he in fact has not already served that time under a different countries hands..

Prison guards are members of a military and therefore should be treated as any soldier folowing orders would be. .

What would be the consequences if he had not followed orders and went awol instead?

Oh jesus ----ing christ. He just followed orders - I see that you are an adolescent and an American, not a real excuse, but if you grew up in Germany and actually talked with people who lived during the 3d Reich you would be sick of these "I only did my duty" excuses. And: It was not always an excuse, sometimes also the bitter truth - many shades of grey involved.
However, what MH already wrote: people had options. A man of honour would prefer to be in a penalty unit and die by a bullet at the Eastern Front over helping to exterminate civilians.
And if you would have read the article or this thread you would know that this whole ---- is not about a trial about direct murder but the very support to commit this extermination.

But I am not here to help you with your failed education, when you do not know the difference between a prison and an extermination camp (Vernichtungslager), your local library can be your friend.
A good start to read would be Eugen Kogan's "Der SS-Staat", which goes in english by the dumb title of: "The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them"

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Slightly off-topic but where letters "KZ" come from? I assume it means concentration camp but that abbreviation is not familiar to me.

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by kraznyi_oktjabr

Slightly off-topic but where letters "KZ" come from? I assume it means concentration camp but that abbreviation is not familiar to me.

The term used during the 3rd Reich was KL - the abbreviation for Konzentrationslager. KZ was used later, afaik only because this sounds more sharp in German, so this is also political, to make the word sound more evil.
Personally, I use KL when I discuss with people who are historical interested.
Don't know when the use of KZ started, the literature after the war used KL - like Kogen's standard work that I recommended in my previous post, which is from 1947.

[Skybird]

Wikipedia:

The Random House Dictionary defines the term "concentration camp" as: "a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc.", and, the American Heritage Dictionary defines it as: "A camp where civilians, enemy aliens, political prisoners, and sometimes prisoners of war are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions."
[edit] Earliest usage of concentration camps and origins of the term

Polish historian W---322;adys---322;aw Konopczy---324;ski has suggested the first concentration camps were created in Poland in the 18th century, during the Bar Confederation rebellion, when the Russian Empire established three concentration camps for Polish rebel captives awaiting deportation to Siberia.[5]
The earliest of these camps may have been those set up in the United States for Cherokee and other Native Americans in the 1830s; however, the term originated in the reconcentrados (reconcentration camps) set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868---8211;1878) and by the United States during the Philippine---8211;American War (1899---8211;1902).[6]
The English term "concentration camp" grew in prominence during the Second Boer War (1899---8211;1902), when they were operated by the British in South Africa.[6][7]
There were a total of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans. Of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, 25,630 were sent overseas. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the local camps were women and children.

Note that this meaning of the term does not have much in common with what the efficient German tyranny turned KZs into. In German, they are often referred to as "Todesfabriken" (death factories), meanming both that the prionsers worked and suffered themselves to death, and produced death, with the context of the gas chambers not needing further explanation, I think.

So the traditional meaning of the Anglosaxon term "concentration camp" is somewhat misleading as a dewscription for the German camps.

The German concentration camps were no concentrated prisons, they were nothing like any of the camps listed in that article. They were designed to kill in masses, not to keep people as prisoners.

Let's cut it short. KZs were the closest imitation of hell man has ever created. While wars and revolutions, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung killed in even bigger scores, I think nothing comes close to the qualitative perfidity and cynism of the Nazi death factories.

[AVGWarhawk]

I would take what Sky has to say concerning this and run with it!

[August]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

I would take what Sky has to say concerning this and run with it!

+ 1

[CCIP]

Another important thing to point out is that being a "regular prison guard" or "military prison guard" is grossly inaccurate for camps which, even when not designed to exterminate, contained thousands upon thousands of civilians who did not commit any crimes nor participated in any combat. So even if deaths were not a factor, I would consider being accessory to their imprisonment to be a very severe crime indeed.

And when I brought up the "8 years in Israel", I didn't really mean anything. Just stating an additional qualifier to your 'he's been in prison already'.

For myself, I think that as long as an opportunity exists to find any perpetrators, regardless of their age or the danger they present to society, it's worthwhile. Better they be held to responsibility directly than having people who weren't alive at the time debate which country is more guilty....

[Seth8530]

guys, im not saying the SS was good at all. Im just more in favor of holding the officers and administrators guilty instead of the people carrying out orders.

Ive also heard that this person was originally captured by the Germans and he is in fact Ukrainian. and then became a part of the prison system. Not saying what the man did is right.. but looking at thigns from more than one point of view can be helpfull ya kno?