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 ...
I'm with ya, how about have we gotten all the Japanese prison guards ( I know we took care of the doctors, gave them homes and money) and did we ever look to make sure none of the Russians involved in the slaughter of their people emigrated here?
What, you can’t trust Communist playwrights employed by the Stasi to get their facts straight? What is this world coming to?
During Paperclip we rewarded many Nazis who had something to contribute to our space, defense, missile, physics, aircraft and other programs. We’re awfully selective about who the “bad” Nazis are and who we let slide.
Lovely stuff. I am all for the free wheeling discussions on FR. There is such a thing as the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. How I do envy America. Yep, free to tell me to keep my mouth shut, love it!
Of course, I myself have experienced how many brave souls intervene against any brutality. Very few. See some thugs beating up on someone and then see how many intervene. How many dared stand against the unspeakable brutality in those camps?
Oh, and by the way the old Luftwaffe nearly shut my mouth in 1941. Pity. ( please excuse, I have Smirnoff to hand, on a delightful summer evening.)
If Hitler had survived the war to be a frail, pathetic old man would you “let it go”? If Obama succeeds in destroying our Constitution and lives to be old and frail, let it go? Hell no!Evil is evil and_like cancer_you don`t let it go ever! Give him to Germany and I hope they put him in the same ovens he guarded.
He has the same right to die in peace that his victims did. Too harsh? Tough? Let Almighty God take up the matter.
But please go on if you have to, and tell us more about the imaginary universe where the Wehrmacht was the volunteer force of the Nazi Party, and it was the SS which was the regular German army full of conscripts.
This looks like the verge of a witch hunt. In the hell that was Nazi Germany, who wouldn't want to clamber up from the pits of Hitler's fury in almost any way they could, though short of committing murders themselves? It sounds very honorable to refuse out of principle, until you really are there.
It’s amazing how the bags of sh*t at the state department can manage to help roust one wrinkled old German dude out of a peaceful twilight but they couldn’t find it within their worthless bureaucratic wastes of skin to get a settlement out of the major Japanese corporations for using our soldiers and civilians for slave labor in the war...
And yet, they stood in towers and watched people going into what they knew were gas chambers. They watched bodies being shoveled into crematoriums. They knew what was going on. The fact that many of them tried to save people on occasion shows that many of them experienced some degree of guilt. How could they justify to themselves standing by and letting millions more die?
Maybe they figured that they there was nothing else they could do. Maybe they figured they'd be killed themselves. But if you're life consists of patrolling the perimeter of a mass-slaughter camp, if that a life worth living? I suppose there wasn't much they could do and keep their own necks, but does that matter?
I'm not fond of putting myself in a theoretical situation and predicting my reaction to said situation, but I'm positive I could not have stood guarding a concentration camp. Better to die yourself and be done with it than live and think about what you are doing.
He volunteered for a job as a guard in a death camp so he wouldn't have to risk death on a battlefield fighting in combat.
He wasn't ordered to work there - it was a plum assignment away from the fighting that he was lucky to get.
Germans who disagreed with the Nazi Party on principle did not join the Party - as SS men did - or volunteer for the SS either.
They got drafted into the regular army and served on the front.
Correction! at most, he has been ACCUSED of... and again this is the pit of Hitler’s hell! Hitler would rather plunge into very foolish missions than admit he had lost his temper.
Are you “Wide Awake” enough to imagine yourself in that hell?
I will take these clowns seriously when they call for the arrest, prosecution and execution of George Soros.
Sarcasm?
“I would get no joy from watching him suffering today, no joy at all.”
It’s not about anyone’s joy. It’s about justice here now for the victims and their family.
We would hope he and us gets right with Jesus before the hereafter when we stand before God.
And he wasn't put in hell, he was busy creating one for other people.
The Germans who were going through hell were the ones fighting on the front, not the Breyers who were "in the rear with the gear" rounding up grandmothers and eating very well while others were on rations.
The victims and their family are no closer to comfort or any flavor of restitution on account of it.
A hell was roaring around him, with its arm outstretched. To deny that is to be fast asleep not wide awake!
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