Auschwitz Guard Arrested

Must say I have a lot of simpathy with the "highly educated German friend", a branch of my family is from Istria and what what Tito's troops did in 1945 was not nice, but I blame Mussolini for it more than the communists (EDIT: not that comunism had much to do with it, more recent events make me suspect it was 90% Serbian nationanism, Balkan politics tend to be bloody).
The holocaust was a crime against humanity and may be a special case, but I have big doubts when it comes to minor participants when I compare their "culpability" with other "crimes" of the era like the deliberate starvation of the conquered USSR population, the post war "ethnic cleansings" , POW deaths in camps by "malign neglect", just to mention the ones that come immediately to my mind but there are others, where there is a tacit agreement to "move on".

I do understand the "move on", looking for the people responsible for the deaths will reopen old wounds, and there is a lot of "cold war propaganda" to wade through before we even get close to determining responsabilities, but the disparity clashes with my sense of justice that requires "treating similar things the same way" and giving priority to prosecuting the larger crimes. Going after a "possible cook" while ignoring people that odered hundreds of civilans shot and thrown into caves, just to quote an one, doesn't look right.

When it comes to POW deaths in camps the situation is particularly murky, haven't researched the area and my feelings are skewed by the stories as kid from an old friend that was captured in NA and remebered fondly his captivity in India, on a rational level i know not all axis troops where that lucky but .... The statistics I've seen, even discounting Baque, make me think it was a matter of degrees, and a lot of bad things come out once you start digging, but it's not an area I enjoy digging into though when someone comes one with cold war style black and white reconstruction it does make sense to do so to put thing in a more historical perspective.

 

Bacque has been widely discredited. His numbers don't stand up to any sort of scrutiny.

It is true that the German army surrendered faster than facilities could be built to house them, but the deaths were only a tiny fraction of what Bacque claimed. I'm surprised anyone still cites him as a source.

 

Although there is the remanants of a big camp at Remagen I blundered into...the Local Germans won't change their mind on this..Ones I spoke to in 90's were adament it was a death camp..I disagreed but the memories lie deep within the locals ...or did.

 

IMHO could be more of an anti-American thing than knowledge of actual events; they want to believe the Yanks were every bit as bad as the Nazis and wanted their pound of flesh after the concentration camps were found, and no-one will ever convince them otherwise.

 

I think thats it Gordon....There were obviously deaths there...but it certainly was not in any shape or form equitable to the real camps..I also think that the Locals suffered heavily in the fight for the bridge...and that has worked its magic on them where America is concerned locally...Probably not that way now...Generations change..I certainly as a RAF Brit never got anything but a good welcome..

 

Here is my problem with the whole situation. Some Germans were pushed in to service under duress as others actually tried to destroy the regime from the inside out. Would we punish those that fought under the guise of a loyal Nazi military personnel, or how about those citizens that did not fight at all, even to try to incapacitate the government. Isn't doing nothing the same as helping the wrong?