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 ...
Thank you for your thoughts.
“And unfortunately there will be no one in this world to punish the sanctimonious Nazi hunters who don’t care about due process.”
You may be right and personally, I’m comfortable knowing that God is ultimately in charge of judging justly.
However, my understanding of this is that he will face a trial and be represented. It may be that he doesn’t survive the stress.
It’s one thing to say that you would rather accept the imminent possibility of your torture and death rather than stand guard at at a concentration camp; it’s quite another to do so realizing what the SS were going to do to your family and friends once you’ve gone.
How do you think Stalin got all his enemies to confess to imaginary crimes? They knew that they were condemning themselves to a death that they did not deserve, yet they would rather the world believe that they died as admitted traitors and hypocrites, just for the the chance that Stalin would have some leniency for their families. Mostly in vain, as it turned out.
Mr. Breyer chose to embrace evil.
I wouldn't blame him if he - like many - just sat in a pillbox firing at the enemy until he was forced to surrender. That was normal.
Breyer chose to participate in the murder of helpless people, while the vast majority of young Germans chose to fight other countries' soldiers instead.
You seem to be completely ignorant of history and morality.
I will concede your point and it is well taken here. I will certainly have to do some research on the plight of teen- age conscripts in war. What bothers me is the actual experience of a human being. The utter hypocrisy of present day Germany fools most people. They do so grovel to prove how anti-Nazi they are.
I will end by the observation that whole populations may be paralyzed by some wicked authority. Not so America of the Founding Fathers. We will see just how far authority can go in America today. Just how many patriots will arise, if and when authority persecutes a segment of society.
Excuse the rant.
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“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart” ~ Ann Frank
How many little ones died?
Your fantasy scenario - that the SS specially sought out and conscripted Breyer and threatened his family with death if he did not work at Auschwitz is a bizarre exercise in fiction.
Breyer made the effort to get the plum position of working there.
He did it because he wanted to, because it was safer and more comfortable that serving in the Wehrmacht like the other 99% of Germans his age.
why should he get off?
He’s a mass murderer and now he’s been masquerading for years as a “nice guy”. Prosecute this monster to the fullest.
better to have the Nazis take you out than become part of their killing machine, sheesh, does no one have any integrity?
Multiple posters on this thread keep repeating this strange fabrication as if it was the equivalent of claiming that water is wet.
oh it’s a crime to assist those fleeing from the Nazis? Read much?
He’s being extradited to stand trial. I assume it will be a fair one, and that he will receive a just sentence if found guilty, and allowed to go free if not. At 89, the extradition and trial may very well kill him and make the whole exercise a moot point.
You seem to be completely ignorant of what C. S. Lewis took great pains to point out in “Mere Christianity.”
Are you SURE you wouldn’t end up acting quite venal, given the proper mix of circumstance?
God knows that answer and is ready to beam your judgment back to you in a mirror.
Yup, that’s the fairest kind... wear the defendant out.
My fantasy scenario? I don't recall commenting on anything other than how difficult it might be to betray a police state in reality, especially when your family is at the mercy of said police state.
Ever occur to you that once he had even LOOKED INTO IT the deal with the devil was effectively made, unless he really heroically split from the country? They’d view someone who backed out as a spy.
If he actually is guilty of the accusation, he had to have been waiting and expecting this day and by some odd twist of fate avoided justice until he was a very old man. He’s lived to an advanced age, something he denied a lot of other people, if guilty. I have little sympathy, unless he’s being wrongly accused. If the matter was broached 20 years ago and his denial of involvement was accepted at that time, I’d assume that there must be new information that has come to light.
That choice could be serving in the Army on active service or (it is said) a concentration camp guard. At first the propaganda of the authorities was that these camps were a work camp. This was to allay suspicions. This by the unfortunate people who were then sent to these camps. Of course, once the system was in place, we in England became aware of the atrocities. I saw the films in 1944.
I offer that a 19 year old could not have known of the horror within. By then it was too late. My problem is of knowing just how many of any population would dare to go in the face of psychopaths. If those thugs could destroy them. Not too many, I fear.
Of course most present day Germans would have stood up to the Gestapo. (s)
From the description of what he personally did when employed, he didn’t steer a single Jew into a single oven. I’m sure he may have felt shame that he risked being put into a position to do that, but at the same time why not relief that by the grace of God it did not happen? I say this case verges on witch hunt, and so did any prior parallel cases.
This is true... there would have been plenty of lies being spread around by Hitler’s gang... and Hitler had seemed to be semi-reasonable only a few years before. The country at large did not know he was regularly blowing his top by this time.
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