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 ...
The last few have not really faced trial. And they have not been convicted. There are a ready group to say that they remember the guards. Of course they don’t. And even the Israeli courts could not convict them. So, then these people sit in jail until they die. Not because they did anything. But because no government will have them. Due process is not allowed here.
This guy, at 19 was made a camp guard in Poland at the end of the war for a few months. Most jobs he could have had were certain death. And that he survived at all is amazing. As a 19 year old German during the end of the war he must have tried to surrender to the US. Not sure how he was not killed by the Russian army.
In 1944, he would have had little food as a guard. His own command would have been trying to save their ass. Bombing raids would have flattened his home in Germany. In Poland he would have had a hostel country and the Russian army invading. I am sure he spent years in a prison camp himself after the war.
I wonder how many of those he murdered would have liked to reach the age of 89?
First, Breyer admits he was there.
Second, I assume the filth you're referring to without having the guts to name is Ivan Demjanjuk, who also admitted to being a death camp guard.
Third, no one is convicted of these crimes on eyewitness testimony alone, and no one ever has been.
Fourth, it's hilarious that an anti-Semite like yourself, bending over backwards to defend concentration camp guards, would accuse me of targeting a criminal for his ethnicity when I am discussing his admitted crimes.
He deliberately chose to commit crimes.
You and others here - interestingly - assume that your fellow posters would naturally go out of their way like Breyer did to find an angle to evade combat service, even if it meant helping slaughter women and children.
No sale.
And, of course, those draftees who went to the front in 1942 did not imagine that they would freeze for months outside Stalingrad: they expected to conquer Russia as their compatriots had conquered Poland and France.
Breyer was not a magical being gifted with knowledge of the future who knew that the Eastern Front would mean hardship and failure. What he did know is that he would get shot at there, that there would be lots of marching and bivouacking, and basic rations. He also knew that staying home to murder kids would mean no one shooting at him, a comfortable billet, plenty of food and liquor, and no marching in the rain.
So your argument is, basically, that if some people escape justice then everyone should escape justice. Why even have courts and prisons at all? There has to be absolute perfection, or why even try, right?
The NKVD was on the winning side.
There is some speculation that Hitler and some of the other Nazi leaders may have had a little understood disease after the Spanish flu epidemic after WWI. Called a “brain fever”, a generic term used for perhaps dozens of diseases, it hit the same group of young people already devastated by the war and the Spanish flu.
Many of them died outright, however survivors were noted for brain damage resulting in profound rages, accompanied with paranoia and a perpetual state of anger against individuals or groups.
Before Hitler joined the Nazi party, it was a mediocre extremist organization, but his speaking attracted others like him, like moths to a flame. Because he said what they were thinking and feeling.
.....how about have we gotten all the Japanese prison guards.....
I did not have the information in detail on a hitherto generally ignored horror story. I did my homework.
Crimes of War
Sheldon H. Harris.
I did remember reading about a chief perpetrator of these horrible war crimes. He was the head of a major pharmaceutical company I take the liberty of roughly quoting Mr Harris. 27% of POW died in their camps. The "evil" German POW camps saw 4% dying of allied prisoners. Horrible experiments were carried out on American prisoners by Japanese doctors. This resulted in agony and often death.
Quoting Mr Harris on the perpetrators. "..... and many enjoyed distinguished careers in post war Japan". I had read that the chief figure in this camp of horrors, ended up as the head of a pharmaceutical company in Japan.
No damn justice.
There are Moral Absolutes in life. But in cases like this...
Moral Absolutes Ping!
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>> I like threads like this one. The FReeper responses run from ...
Agreed! Thanks for the ping.
He's had 70 more years of life than the 100's of thousands that he helped to put to death.
He is a monster, period, and deserves to die.
************************
Agreed.
What many fail to recall is the massive propaganda and indoctrination campaign that had been going on for years prior to the first Jew or undesirable being sent to a camp.
Many of these folks were conditioned to believe these folks needed to be gone...
There was a program on not too long ago where Hitler had floated the idea early on his term as Fuhrer and was met with significant resistance...hence, Goebbels set about changing people’s perceptions and attitudes towards the eventual victims of the holocaust.
Slowly and inexorably, they went about changing the minds of the German people to “accept” what was to come.
These weren’t just ordinary folks plucked off the street...these were folks who had demonstrated a capacity towards doing the “work” with little to no remorse.
The SS Death Head’s Division was the worst of the worst, psycopaths more than likely. They had been taught to hate their “enemies” with no remorse, compassion and inflexible harshness.
In the last days of the war however, the regular SS personnel were released in order to attempt escape and Auxiliary SS conscripts from regular army units and other organizations were brought in to keep the camps operating.
This guy may be one of those Auxiliary SS guys...not that it’s really an excuse.
Many Czechs were forced to serve in the German military. I would be very, very cautious about prosecuting a man who may have been a boy who could not refuse service without endangering himself AND all his family. This man may be evil, but he may be a man about to be punished for the second time, once by the invading Nazis and now by the current US and German governments.
What will putting an 89-year-old former prison guard on trial for the deaths of ALL those prisoners accomplish? He cannot possibly have killed them all, nor will his trial, and even death, atone for the sins the Nazis committed.
Forgive him and consider it a lesson learned for posterity.
Apparently our own government, however, has no problem hurtling again toward such totalitarianism and evil...only with different groups in charge and different groups being murdered/silenced. Lesson has NOT been learned.
Please recall that Czechoslovakia was essentially sacrificed by Britain’s Neville Chamberlain in return for “peace in our time.” The Czechs, then, had to live in submission to their Nazi overlords. People in those circumstances sometimes have to make agonizing choices.
Sad Philly ping... what do we think here? The rule of law is absolute; or "the law is an ass"?
LOL, nice smackdown, Peter Libra!
Come to think of it, I was an 18 year old conscript in National Service 1950. I became quickly acquainted with the Non Commissioned Officer of the British variety. A very few were socio-paths, detested and feared. One could not even move a muscle on one's face in those days. A charge of dumb insubordination could be levelled.
The name behind that type of bully's back was pronounced "Basstud", with a hiss on the first four letters. The only thing that kept them from absolute abuse was the KRRS- Kings Rules and Regulations.
There was nothing to be done but to "grin and bear it". To even whine was to invite reprisals. God help the poor conscript that one of these men had it in for. Perhaps this explains my views and it might be subconscious.
Ok, enough of a sort of vanity here. I beg the mods indulgence. My Dad was a Dunkirk veteran and got the DCM in an action against the Panzers in Belgium 1940.
I agree that the hardliner(s) on here are not putting the situation into context. Without knowing the evidence, I cannot come down on one side or the other as yet.
My Dad was a Dunkirk veteran and got the DCM in an action against the Panzers in Belgium 1940.
The West had some very brave men to save our bacon. I thank you for your service and salute the memory of your Dad. You never gave up!
The last 2 sentences are an attempt to shed some light on that...the SS realized their time was coming, but wanted the “work” to continue. How to do that when they are telling the SS guards and such to make their escape?
They conscripted many “regular” folks to keep it going. I would suspect there was probably a few SS diehards willing to stay behind and make sure it did...
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