Auschwitz SS Radio Operator Charged

"A 91-year-old woman has been charged with 260,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations she was a member of the Nazi SS who served in Auschwitz, German prosecutors claim.
Schleswig-Holstein prosecutors' spokesman Heinz Doellel said Monday the woman is alleged to have served as a radio operator for the camp commandant Rudolph Hoess, who was hanged after the war for his crimes against humanity, from April to July 1944.
Prosecutors argue that the accused, whose name wasn't disclosed due to German privacy laws, can be charged as an accessory because she helped the death camp function.
Doellel says there are no indications the woman is unfit for trial, though a court likely won't decide on whether to proceed with the case until next year.
Her duty rosters show she was in his service from April until Juli 1944 and the indictment states 'she was a helper in the systematic murder of the Jews transported there.'
'There is sufficient evidence against her,' added the prosecutor.
The woman's name allegedly appeared on lists of Auschwitz subjects in the 1970's but not no living witnesses could be found to testify against her.
If she is judged medically fit to stand trial - numerous Auschwitz personnel have evaded prosecution in the past two years by pleading the dementia card - she will be tried at a court in Kiel."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3243431/German-woman-91-charged-260-000-counts-accessory-murder-prosecutors-accuse-Nazi-SS-radio-operator-served-Auschwitz.html#ixzz3mQTIPjtp

 

When it comes to these monsters, waiting till next year does no good. There needs to be a sense or urgency for the legal process for suspected Nazi criminals.

 

as stated before, seems like these cases are very hard to prove...so long ago...accessory to murder?? how?...what exactly did she do? it says ''she helped the death camp function" ..that would cover a lot more people<> .what about the people that built the camps, the janitors, all the railroad people that transported the Jews, railroad maintenance workers, the truckers that brought in supplies, the workers who loaded the trucks, etc....unless you were in a high position to resign, etc, I find it hard to find someone like that guilty

 

There is some truth to what you are saying,it has to be difficult, especially in today's world, to convict someone of a crime that occurred 70 years ago. However, all those people you mentioned should have been weeded out and detained immediately, but the numbers were so high it was impossible. The occupying forces were not equipped to be the judge and jury (although some took matters in their own hands).

 

I will say, my dad is 85 and can't remember too many details of the Korean War....or of when he was in his teens....of course he does remember getting shot in 1950....I would think some witnesses would clearly remember some details of the horror they went through...however, I would think a good defense lawyer could use some type of memory loss deal....

 

But is being a Radio Operator for the camp enough to be a crime? I guess we'll have to see the evidence they have.

 

yes, then everyone who had anything to do with the camp would be guilty

 

I can imagine what they have is pretty substantial. If you charge someone with a crime 70 years after the fact, you need to have something.

 

I agree Lou. I am sure the file is inundated with plenty instances of her knowledge of the atrocities

 

It would have been hard to have been the radio operator for the camp (or switchboard) and not know precisely what was happening.

 

Think she caught on what was going on real early. Hope she hasn't slept for 70 years.

 

But knowledge of a crime alone isn't enough. I would expect there should be more evidence demonstrating personal guilt in the atrocities, not merely "knowledge of..." Regardless of how morally despicable her character was/is. That, however, does not seem to be the stance in Germany, which I find quite dangerous.

I agree with bronk; if you are going to persecute for involvement on this scale, they should start chasing the rail workers and suppliers of electrified barbed wire as well. The only difference being that a party member and SS-member has explicitly submitted themselves to the Nazi code of (im)morality, whereas a "mere railworker" has not done so explicitly. In fact, on the whole it seems to be a more a case of trying to create awareness and sensationalise, rather than seeking justice.

It is more a question of whether one considers them guilty based on the ideology they had been brainwashed into believing. Because having bought into Nazism, then there wouldn't have been much choice for either her, nor Oskar Groening. These small cogs just realised, if not them, then someone else would have done it.

With the entire German nation being an "accessory to genocide", does this narrative really make sense? Is not just some feeble attempt to purge Germany entire of the guilt of complicit knowledge? Yet another attempt to whitewash the rest of German society? "Look what they, the monsters of the SS, did!"

 

"I was just following orders" and "Everybody else was doing it too" isn't accepted as a defence in any legal jurisdiction I know of.

 

Everybody else was doing what? Sending Radio messages? The Daily Mail article is very thin on the ground beyond the fact the radio operator was there. Oskar Goening was sentenced to four years, but it's not at all clear what he was supposed to have done differently, or wherein his criminal culpability lies. Even he admits his moral culpability. But that is not what Criminal Courts try (or should try).

This is a whole new series of trials by the German legal system, one had it been carried out 20 years ago would've swamped the system with cases. It is rather telling that they aren't trying them on any individual action, beyond "recognisably being there" and "being an accessory" So their crime is now only persecuteable because they lived longer than the rest? That doesn't seem particularly just either.

If it's enough to be an accessory, they should try DSB and it's employees as well. The number of Germans complicit in the crime of the holocaust is not limited to the those Nazis working in the camps. They were only the very last, very visibile workers in a long line of miscreants that enabled the mass murders. Most of the others never witnessed the consequences of their decisions, nor were they seen by their victims. I see no (zip, zilch, zero) effort to seek justice by tracking down those that actually enabled those places to exist.

With such industry scale murders, it isn't really implementing justice, when almost the entire Justice system of the Third reich got off scot free. So much medical research, so many doctors, lawyers, engineers... Indeed, so many of the real criminals (and we aren't talking about radio operators) were allowed to continue not only their jobs, but their careers. So let's drop the pretence, and recognise what this really is.

 

For the commandant, and therefore being complicit in the camp's running. That's why she was charged as an accessory.
As I said, it would have been impossible for her not to have known what was happening, since she was demonstrably a part of it as a member of a criminal organisation- the SS.
One thing she is not is a victim of the culture of Nazism, since she was a part of it.

 

GS you make some good points. It's completely arbitrary to label someone guilty of a part in the Holocaust merely because they are in the Nazi party or they had some outside chance that they were a pawn in the machine, such as a railways worker, truck driver, etc. But in this case, and focusing only on the radio operator, her crimes are in line with direct involvement. Could she of stopped the events that surrounded her, no, not as a whole, but her proximity to Hoess and her continued willingness to continue with her "duties" makes her an ideal candidate for this charge.

 

It's kind of hard to disagree, without knowing in more detail exactly what her duties consisted of. It seems clear, though, that the current German authorities are chasing Nazis involved directly in the basic administrative tasks of the camp, which all seems altogether far too late considering the length of time that has passed. Indeed, as no larger fish remain alive, and in light of the very conscious decision taken in the late 1950's, to cease War Crimes persecutions primarily because it would have entailed incarcerating a very large portion of the German population. Additionally, almost everybody then, in the late 50's in Germany "just wanted to get on with life" (apart from the Holcaust survivors, and not even all of them), what is happening today seems a far more political process than anything really anchored in "justice" or "law".

I just get this feeling that it is more about the political "being seen to have done something" at a point in time, when the memory of the holocaust became very political again, trying to stem a tide of growing fascism in Europe, while the criminals are dying off in droves. Kind of a panicked response by a legal system trying to cleanse itself of its own misdeeds.

She was "only", there for 4 months, according to the Daily Mail article.

Not denying her moral culpability, but I find many legal aspects highly questionable.

 

I can't argue with you there. I fear, if I'm understanding correctly, that the Holocaust has become, for some, a political platform that is used to gain favor. I hope I'm wrong, because that's despicable.

 

Curious...

The unnamed woman only served between in Auschwitz from April, 1944 through July, 1944. Yet, is charged with 260,000 counts of accessory to murder.

260,000 seems to be quite high for the period of April-July, 1944, and wouldn't that make the death toll of Auschwitz much higher than the commonly accepted 1.1 million prisoner deaths.

Unfortunately, this is all just more political maneuvering by the German government...which has given these people a free pass for decades, even though they knew who these people were and what they had participated in. Except, now, it has become politically expeditious to start pointing fingers and crying "Guilty!"