Posted on 06/18/2014 6:39:36 PM PDT by re_tail20
Johann Breyer, 89, shuffled unsteadily into a federal courtroom here on Wednesday morning, using a cane for support as he sunk slowly into a chair at the defense table.
The retired toolmaker from what was then Czechoslovakia, who immigrated to the United States in 1952, was thin and pale and dressed in a green jail uniform after a night spent in lockup following his arrest at his home in Philadelphia. He looked confused at times, too, but when the judge asked him if he understood why the German authorities wanted to put him on trial there, he answered simply, “Yes.”
Nothing about his demeanor suggested the long-ago secrets that the authorities in both Germany and the United States say Mr. Breyer has carried with him for 70 years. As an armed guard at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz and a member of the notorious SS “Death’s Head” battalion, the authorities charged Wednesday that Mr. Breyer was complicit in the gassing of 216,000 Jews brought there in 1944 from Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Germany.
The Germans, seeking to have him extradited to the Wieden district to stand trial, have charged him with 158 counts of “aiding and abetting” in murder — one count for each of the 158 trainloads of Jews brought to the killing center at Auschwitz in a six-month span. Most of the so-called deportees, including many thousands of women, children and old people, were killed in gas chambers almost immediately after arriving at Auschwitz, then cremated.
Mr. Breyer acknowledged two decades ago, when first questioned by the American authorities, that he had worked as a guard at Auschwitz, but he said that he did so “involuntarily” and that he had nothing to do with the gassings....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
While your at it, arrest George Soros too.
Leave him alone? Are you serious? So any murderer who avoids justice for a long time gets a free pass? Are you serious???
too bad Pope Pius XII can not be put on trial too.
The opening sentence makes me want to puke. Attempting to garner sympathy for an “old man”. Awwwww. BS. He can make his own peace with God...I don’t claim to be making his final judgment. However, he can reap what he has sown, just like the rest of us. Mercy can come from God...not from me. Nor do I think he asked for it, anyway.
Guess who I believe?
I wonder what the average Joe in any country would have said to the psychopathic Gestapo in 1940? This when he was a 19 year old and told to become a guard.
Ah yes, got a machine gun and slaughtered the bloody lot, I suppose.
“He was 69 when he lied about it....”
He’s been living a lie since they lost the war. He hasn’t exactly blown his horn proudly about his service to the furor.
Give him a break.
I have felt the same way for the last ten years. I didn’t want to step on any toes, but my gosh, the man is almost 100 year old! At a certain point, it seems cruel to wrap twenty pounds of chains around his wrists and ankles. Of course it was horribly wrong what happened, but they are about all gone now. Let it go.
If he was the rare 90 y/o still preaching hate and ready to gun fight with the cops, that would be different. There are 90 y/o who fit that description, but not him. I would get no joy from watching him suffering today, no joy at all. He and his family line are already punished by being identified.
Too bad he missed the Nuremberg trials, oversight?
I think not, he has made sure he missed them.
What if he’s tried and acquitted?
Hang him anyway?
you could never prove he did anything. you could prove that he was 19. You had 70 years to find him guilty while he lived as a law abiding US citizen in the open, never denying who he was, where he worked.
This is very likely two wrongs. Even if one was much larger than the other. You cannot punish him. He lived his life. And unfortunately there will be no one in this world to punish the sanctimonious Nazi hunters who don’t care about due process.
You’re an idiot. But useful for the left.
MAD-ison10...
Consider your child was raped and murdered by a guy who got away with it for decades.
You gonna “just leave him alone”?
Are you a Tare?
Funny how everyone else had to volunteer.
When you know nothing about a topic, you should probably keep your mouth shut.
What was the statute of limitations on murder again?
You’re a loony. Go study history not written by the left.
The nazis did not let old Jews escape; they even rounded up 90-year-olds from old people’s homes.
So, let them have the same measure of mercy they meted out to others.
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