91 year old sentenced to jail for his role in killing Jews.

[skitzo van]

Are you fucking kidding me? A man being held responsible for what happened over sixty years ago, and we have no idea about this man or what he stands for now, and we treat this man like Satan incarnate. Humanity has compassion, until we see it fit to osctracise someone for something we don't agree with. Sure, killing Jews was incredibly wrong and this man might have been a giant idiot to help aid this horrendous cause, but so much has happened over the decades that we have to know this man to actually determine if he deserves this. The thing is, this was LAW in Hitler's reign, and if you didn't comply you would end up with the Jews, so when Hitler died and the nazis were brought to trial, the courts couldn't try them on non-German laws or even their own laws, but they pulled the "There is a law above the law" deal straight out of nowhere. I would honestly love to believe that, but all we have is morality, which is subjective from person to person. But, my whole paragraph can be diminished if this man is fine with killing innocents.

 

[skitzo van]

captcha messed up, sorry about that.

 

[GoddyofAus]

Even over 60 years later, Justice can be served. Let this and Osama be a lesson to any future bigots who gain any type of power: you can run to the ends of the earth, but you'll never run far enough.

 

[neoontime]

Eh, kind of seems right since people still cling to the things Michael Vick and Mel Gibson have done.
Though really, the guys way to old to sit in jail.

 

[Angerwing]

In my opinion, if he is released, it should be because of faults in the evidence. Let a trial sort out his guilt. If he is in fact found guilty, he should'nt be released due to his age.

 

[Chawx]

i am completely losing faith in humanity.

 

[Baby Tea]

Personally I find this stupid. Being Jewish, my grandma told me plenty of stories of her escape and the family members that our family lost to the Nazis though putting a 91 year old in jail for it? I don't agree.

Then you must not have been paying attention to your grandma.
My grandfather fought in the dutch underground, and watched his two brother get shot in the head on his front lawn by the Nazis. He and my grandma hid Jews form the Nazis in their local church, and hid at least one small boy in their house from German patrols (Who they were able to reunite with many many years later. Very moving story).

What happened to not only the Jewish peoples, but many other minorities, disabled people, handicapped people, and their sympathizers was utterly horrific. And unless you're typing here/reading this from the Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Burma, Haiti, or some other country that is just wracked with similar, horrific acts in recent history, then you have no conceivable idea what these people went through. Zero.

This isn't about revenge on a 91 year old man. This is about justice.
He's just as guilty of the crimes he committed now, as 5 minutes after he did them.

Of course, after reading the article, there is question whether or not he is indeed guilty.
So if he is: Let him serve what time he has left.

 

[Kilo24]

...

Ah! A well founded argument! Good. I like that.

Consider this, however. These cases are not brought to bear lightly, no doubt, particularly in the case of a decrepid old man. There is going to be damning evidence against this guy. Count on it.

On a more subjective note, if you've ever seen the truly oppressed and down trodden cry over thier murdered children first hand... well, you'd get your panties in a bunch over stuff like this too... assuming you're a decent human being.

It is guaranteed that there is more to the case than you or I saw in the articles. That's a standard problem with the media: it aims for shocking news more than accurate news. And also that if the long, technical legal summary was printed, no-one would read it.

That being said, I'm talking about it from this http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,762175,00.html article. It's mainly this paragraph which rankles me:

With no surviving witnesses, Demjanjuk's conviction hinged on contemporary documents and on a Nazi ID card, which the defense insisted was a Soviet fake. While there was no evidence of Demjanjuk's participation in any specific crime, prosecutors argued that death camp guards were an essential part of the Nazi killing machine. His defense team also argued that, as a prisoner of war, Demjanjuk would have been shot or would have starved to death had he refused to become a guard.

That, and the fact that the judge solely said that he was convinced that the man had served as a guard and not that anything else was proven, says that working for Nazis is a criminal activity regardless of whether he did anything actually prohibited by law.

It's possible that the article is misleading, but I think it's unlikely that these clear statements would be erroneous.

And, yes, it would be likely if one of my family members was murdered by Nazis in the Holocaust, my panties would be in a bunch. Therefore, a decent legal system would ethically disallow me from participating in the case because I wouldn't be impartial. It's a good trait for starting a lynch mob or starting up activism, but a bad trait if you want the legal system to be focused on laws.

 

[LiudvikasT]

This is insane. The court system should look at one thing: is the accused a danger society?

That's not how our court systems work.

Then it's a bad system then. I always hear "justice this, justice that", but actually it's just vengeance. Courts shouldn't be here to punish circumstances, they should be here to prevent those unfortunate circumstances from repeating.

 

[TheEnglishman]

Killing people is murder, murder is a crime, criminals get punished with jail.

This former Nazi killed people, so yes, he should go to jail and I hope he dies there for his crimes, and when he dies, I will use this YouTube clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbB_HVcXpPk&feature=related

 

[LiudvikasT]

This is insane. The court system should look at one thing: is the accused a danger society?

That's not how our court systems work.

Then it's a bad system then. I always hear "justice this, justice that", but actually it's just vengeance. Courts shouldn't be here to punish circumstances, they should be here to prevent those unfortunate circumstances from repeating.

That would be one way to look at it. Punishment however has been a part of the legal systems in most places since we've had legal systems. Failing to consider that promotes vigilantism.

If its just about "making sure society is safe", then you could, for example, argue quite well that a pedophile is molested 4 of his kids but never touched any others would be quite safe to release and not punish at all as long as they were never allowed to be close to kids again. People wouldn't be ok with that would they?

It depends on people. I have no blood lust, if it was made sure he was not able to repeat his crimes, then I see absolutely no reason to keep him locked up.

 

[Kilo24]

No, he was not "just a guard". Seriously did no one look into this before commenting? He had a reputation for being unusually cruel and revelling in torturing prisoners.

Thats not true, it says that no where. :S

Look beyond this thread and go back to the evidence in the original trial. He was called "Ivan the terrible" for a reason. Not even the defense disputed that the guy the prosecutors claim he was did horrible things that deserved prosecution. They are just arguing this is a case of mistaken identity and he is not that man.

This conviction was not him being "Ivan the Terrible." That was disproven in the original trial. This is a conviction of him being a guard at a different camp. It's unrelated.

EDIT: Actually, it's also worth noting that "The judge, however, ordered that Demjanjuk, who has spent the last two years behind bars, be set free despite the sentence."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,762175,00.html

 

[kayisking]

What's the point?? What more could he do now that he is 91? Now he is gonna stare the wall in jail instead of staring the wall in home or hospital? And Nazis are humans too, intolerance for intolerance is intolerance.

The point is that the man is a murderer and that he needs to be punished.

Why? No seriously, give me your answer. What good comes of this?

None whatsoever, but that is not the point of justice, now is it? Let me ask you a question, what does the word justice mean to you? For me it means that the wicked do not go unpunished, but what does it mean for you?
Ps. As always, please excuse my poor English, as I am not a native speaker.

 

[SovietSecrets]

Personally I find this stupid. Being Jewish, my grandma told me plenty of stories of her escape and the family members that our family lost to the Nazis though putting a 91 year old in jail for it? I don't agree.

Then you must not have been paying attention to your grandma.
My grandfather fought in the dutch underground, and watched his two brother get shot in the head on his front lawn by the Nazis. He and my grandma hid Jews form the Nazis in their local church, and hid at least one small boy in their house from German patrols (Who they were able to reunite with many many years later. Very moving story).

What happened to not only the Jewish peoples, but many other minorities, disabled people, handicapped people, and their sympathizers was utterly horrific. And unless you're typing here/reading this from the Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Burma, Haiti, or some other country that is just wracked with similar, horrific acts in recent history, then you have no conceivable idea what these people went through. Zero.

This isn't about revenge on a 91 year old man. This is about justice.
He's just as guilty of the crimes he committed now, as 5 minutes after he did them.

Of course, after reading the article, there is question whether or not he is indeed guilty.
So if he is: Let him serve what time he has left.

I listened to my grandma well. Her on the run stories, her family being captured and killed, and her hiding with my grandfather trying to escape. Through all her stories there was not one shred of bitterness or hatred. She forgave what happened and moved on with her life and she hoped for everyone else to. Justice was carried out for her with the trials there after and this man had been tried already by Israel and found innocent. Why bring it up again without hard evidence? The man has himself to live with if he is guilty and looks to be half dead already. My grandparents forgave, no one found him guilty that time, and now Germany sentences him? Its pointless. Let the guy die with his own thoughts to deal with.

Also to address the point of I have no idea, I was beaten for being Jewish in my middle school by a group of kids who though Hitler had the right idea. I have some idea after all of that of what my family has been through.

 

[Biosophilogical]

What's the point?? What more could he do now that he is 91? Now he is gonna stare the wall in jail instead of staring the wall in home or hospital? And Nazis are humans too, intolerance for intolerance is intolerance.

The point is that the man is a murderer and that he needs to be punished.

Why? No seriously, give me your answer. What good comes of this?

None whatsoever, but that is not the point of justice, now is it? Let me ask you a question, what does the word justice mean to you? For me it means that the wicked do not go unpunished, but what does it mean for you?
Ps. As always, please excuse my poor English, as I am not a native speaker.

That's 'justice', but when justice does more harm than good, what's the point?