Omaha Steve (57,209 posts) http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141248784
German court: former SS Auschwitz guard fit for trial
Source: AP
BERLIN (AP) — A German court says a 93-year-old former SS sergeant charged with 170,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he served as an Auschwitz death camp guard has been declared fit for trial.
The Detmold state court said Monday a doctor determined that Reinhold H., whose last name wasn't given for privacy reasons, is fit to stand trial so long as sessions are limited to two hours per day.
Defense attorneys and prosecutors now have two weeks to submit responses to the expert opinion. The court will then decide whether to open a trial.
H. is accused of being an accessory to murders at Auschwitz from January 1943 to June 1944. The suspect says he was assigned to a part of the camp not involved in the mass murders.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/47ad617159f24ca28c2fe5cae60987eb/german-court-former-ss-auschwitz-guard-fit-trial
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DUmpmonkiez are torn. They hate the Jews of course and claim the holocaust never happened and at the same time claim NAZIs were republicans all along...
forest444 (1,394 posts)
1. Small fish to distract from the big catch.
More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
Well... W. was born in 1946 so it's doubtful he was involved in the NAZI atrocities of course. H.W. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Bush postponed college, enlisted in the U.S. Navy on his 18th birthday, and became the youngest aviator in the U.S. Navy at the time. He served until the end of the war, He was assigned to Torpedo Squadron (VT-51) as the photographic officer in September 1943. The following year, his squadron was based on the USS San Jacinto as a member of Air Group 51. During their attack, the Avengers encountered intense anti-aircraft fire; Bush's aircraft was hit by flak and his engine caught on fire. Despite his plane being on fire, Bush completed his attack and released bombs over his target, scoring several damaging hits.[1] With his engine ablaze, Bush flew several miles from the island, where he and one other crew member on the TBM Avenger bailed out of the aircraft;[7] the other man's parachute did not open. Bush waited for four hours in an inflated raft, while several fighters circled protectively overhead until he was rescued by the lifeguard submarine USS Finback. For the next month he remained on the Finback, and participated in the rescue of other pilots. Several of those shot down during the attack were executed and eaten by their captors. Bush subsequently returned to San Jacinto in November 1944 and participated in operations in the Philippines until his squadron was replaced and sent home to the United States. Through 1944,
he flew 58 combat missions for which he received the Distinguished Flying Cross, three Air Medals, and the Presidential Unit Citation awarded to San Jacinto.
Because of his valuable combat experience, Bush was reassigned to Norfolk Navy Base and put in a training wing for new torpedo pilots. He was later assigned as a naval aviator in a new torpedo squadron, VT-153, based at Naval Air Station Grosse Ile, Michigan. Upon the Japanese surrender in 1945, Bush was honorably discharged in September of that year.
Doubtful H.W. was working with the NAZIs while fighting the Japs in the Pacific.
Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
So... W.'s grandfather was a shareholder in companies that profited during the NAZI rise to power?
However- those companies' assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. What companies? Well...
While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade.
So... he did business with a major German company who's owner fell out with the Germans in late 1938... before the war between German and the US started? Damn him!
AND documents from the US National Archive declassified last year (2003) link Bush to CSSC (see above), although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Thus, Preston might not have been doing business with CSSC after Pearl Harbor after all, hmmm?
JustABozoOnThisBus (11,797 posts)
2. Is this some kind of German politically correct zero tolerance?
This is like saying every U.S. soldier who served in Iraq is an accomplice/accessory to the war crimes of Bush/Cheney, because they went in with false evidence of WMDs.
Someone assigned to permanent guard duty is generally not an evil mastermind.
COLGATE4 (7,577 posts)
28. As a person whose immediate family was murdered
in the Holocaust you'll understand that my nature is not as forgiving as yours.
leftynyc (15,918 posts)
4. Are you really comparing Iraq to what was done at a death camp? Systematically choosing who will live and who will die, children ripped from their mothers arms so they can be gassed? You think that's a valid comparison? There's a reason that anyone who uses Godwin's law automatically loses and argument.
NonMetro (488 posts)
21. I See No One Else Was Wiling To Support Your Point, But I Will.
And if someone wants to tell me to "educate" myself, I will warn them in advance they can go to hell.
That said, you're right: The war in Iraq could be declared a war crime, even a genocide of sorts, and a lot of people already think it is. And unlike this Nazi soldier at this concentration camp who probably had only two choices: be there or be dead, our soldiers all volunteered to take part in Iraq. Now, they may have been ordered to go there once they volunteered to be in the military, but they did volunteer knowing full well they could be ordered into combat.
Now, I, personally, do not hold any young soldier who went to Iraq responsible for anything that happened there. It wasn't their doing. The responsibility rests with those who sent them there. But that's just me. Other people would hold them personally responsible for everything that happened there.
So, I feel your point is perfectly valid.
Yes... they said it on DU. Our soldiers were worst than the NAZIs.
sorefeet (872 posts)
12. I still think Bush and Company
will be tried and found guilty. They will be exiled some where.
jtuck004 (13,291 posts)
16. How many counts of murder we would all get for profiting off the death of 50 million indigenous
people? Or the profits we all made from a nation built on slavery? The innocent families we are destroying today with our drones and bombs?
Except that we won't that, because we are much better than Nazi prison guards. I am told.
America the two-faced.
The NAZIs only killed 6 million!
