The German Government is Still Hunting Old Nazis

Germany's top Nazi Hunter, Kurt Schrimm in on  mission!

Ludwigsburg, Germany--Germany's Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes is located in this picturesque hamlet close to Stuttgart.  

The head honcho of this Nazi-hunting agency is Kurt Schrimm.  Schrimm is on a desperate mission to round up as many as 50 former guards from the Auschwitz concentration Camp believed to still be alive. 

Schrimm will not have to run fast after these guys because the old fugitives are well into their 90’s and have canes, walkers and wheelchairs.  Others are blind, deaf or suffering from dementia. 

What Schrimm lacks is convincing eyewitness testimony of the alleged crimes.  Schrimm will try to make these cases using old Nazi records that seem to place the men at Auschwitz during the time when atrocities were committed. 

Considering name similarities and the hearsay nature of these records this questionable legal quest seems incredibly complicated and flawed. 

There is no Statute of Limitations preventing prosecution but there comes a point in time when the quest for justice is purely symbolic but in reality totally meaningless. 

I don’t suggest for a moment that some or even all of the men were not involved in mass government sponsored murder and kidnapping.   The difficulty will be to separate the criminals from those conscripts that somehow avoided committing atrocities.  There were many cooks, clerks and medical workers within the ranks of the camp staff. 

The last man tried for War Crimes was retired Cleveland autoworker and naturalized U.S. citizen, John Demjanjuk.  Demjanjuk was tried convicted, sentenced to hang and was later cleared by an Israeli Court.  Nonetheless Demjanjuk was rearrested by Schrimm's agents and tried again in Munich and convicted.  He was sentenced to a nursing home where he peacefully died soon thereafter.  The irony was that the old man would have been confined to a bed no matter the outcome of the expensive and meaningless show trial.

Demjanjuk’s case was long fraught with despicable shenanigans committed by the U.S. Office of Special Investigations that essentially framed him with forged documents.  The OSI was struggling for funding and needed to justify its existence as a government agency at the time. 

What the Nazi’s did to fellow Germans, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Communists and Jews was shocking.  Hitler’s regime murdered six million of their castigated minorities but it’s somehow forgotten that over nine million German’s also perished under the Nazis. 

The U.S. Office of Special Investigations and Germany’s Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes has outlived their usefulness.  They need to shutter their doors and fade away like the old Nazis they’ve been chasing. 

It would make more sense to create better safeguards in every government preventing government tyranny and murder under color of law. 

After the Holocaust surviving Jews began to chant, “Never again!”  The fact is that history is replete with acts of genocide and government sponsored mass murder.  It will happen again and again as long as humans roam this earth.

91 Year-Old Cleveland Auto Worker Convicted of Nazi War Crimes and Then Ordered Freed.

Munich, Germany— John Demjanjuk like all Ukrainian able-bodied men were rounded up by the Nazis during World War Two and forced into slavery. Demjanjuk was forced to work as a guard at the Sobibor, Poland concentration camp where thousands perished from untreated diseases, old age, starvation and of course mass murder.

There were other prisoners forced into the same guard duties at Sobinor but they were Jewish Kappos. Although a few more notorious kappos were beaten or killed by camp survivors when the Russians liberated them, none were ever put on trial for war crimes.

Demjanjuk was simply a tool used by our own government’s Office of Special Investigations to justify their existence. OSI was funded to identify and locate war criminals that were suspected of fleeing from justice and hiding in the United States. Their record at success was dismal.

In the Demjanjuk case the OSI falsely identified him as a notorious criminal dubbed as Ivan the Terrible and nearly got him hanged in Israel. OSI produced a phony identity card that finally was exposed as a blatant forgery by the well-respected document examiner Bill Flynn of Phoenix, Arizona. The sentence of death and conviction was reversed and Demjanjuk was set free to the major embarrassment of the OSA agents.

OSI simply made another case against Demjanjuk and got him prosecuted as a different person this time in Munich. Again the OSI won a conviction. Okay, we must hold our nose because of the foul odor here.

Germany has suffered the guilt of the 12 year Nazi regime for 66 years to date. The children and grand children of Germany had made every possible concession they could to the world’s Jews and continue to do so. Trying suspected war criminals on weak or meaningless evidence is just another way to satisfy the German debt to the Jews.

Of course when it came to war criminals that the United States needed there was no OSA nor was there extradition nor trials anywhere. Was there a double standard? There always is a double standard in the real world.

Demjanjuk’s trial began on November of 2009 and ended today with a forgivin five year prison sentence. At its very best this was a case of symbolism over substance since the frail Demjanjuk will be spending the limited remaining years confined to a nursing home. Now it may be at the expense of the German government.

With respect to any appeal the reality is that would take more time than Demjanjuk has left.

This is the last chapter in a 30 year effort by the OSI to scapegoat Demjanjuk. The power of government is indeed awesome.

This also seems to be the last legal chapter in a monumental crime against humanity. It was not the German people but some committed Nazis operating with a tyrannical secret government responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and nine million Germans.

In an act of mercy the court odered Demjanjuk freed because of his health and age. The question is where does he go from here since his American citizenship was revoked? Is Demjanjuk a man without a country today? Will Germany deport him? Munich is not a bad place to spend remaining years at all.

Trying John Demjanjuk for War Crimes is a Pointless Exercise

Munich, Germany—Defense lawyer Ulrich Busch has once again asked a court to discharge his client, 90 year-old retired Cleveland auto worker, John Demjanjuk from War Crimes allegations.

Demjanjuk’s trial has reached the one-year mark without any smoking-gun or even newsworthy revelations being made.

The trial of Demjanjuk is largely symbolic since Germany has no death penalty and the worst that could happen is that the accused war criminal would spend his remaining days in a nursing home. Demjanjuk most likely will never leave a nursing home anyway since he is in need of regular blood transfusions and is very frail.

Busch has raised Demjanjuk’s declining health and a seemingly valid claim of Double Jeopardy. Demjanjuk was tried and eventually cleared of war crimes in Israel after documentary evidence supplied by the United States Office of Special Investigations was determined by the court to be forged. Germany has no Constitutional guarantee against Double Jeopardy but it’s a worthy argument just the same.

Germany has at best a paper thin case against Demjanjuk if for no other reason he’s outlived virtually every potential witness against him. Trying Demjanjuk has been a monumental challenge since the court has to work around his constant medical treatment.

Trying Demjanjuk has no more meaning now than trying a breathing corpse. They only people suffering are the defendant’s innocent family.

The War Crimes Trial of John Demjanjuk has turned into a pointless exercise. Perhaps it’s time for Germany and the rest of the world to move on from that dark chapter of history.

I find it interesting that nobody has ever bothered to lift a finger bringing Soviet military war criminals to justice for their non-stop murder and rape orgy after the fall of Berlin. The answer is really very simple, only the winners or wars write history books and the losers are tried and executed as war criminals.

Germany has paid for their sins with the needless loss of its own 9 million productive citizens because of the tyranny of National Socialism.

John Demjanjuk’s Life Story Should be A Hollywood Mini-Series

Munich, Germany—Currently on trial here for War Crimes is retired Cleveland auto worker, John Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk was simply a Ukrainian fellow who was forced to work for the Nazis or face death. What he may or may not have done is based upon conflicting accusations backed by no real evidence.

Today, Demjanjuk, 90 is frail and very tired and trying him for wars crimes is taking Germany many months. The trial has been stopped numerous times because of Demjanjuk’s health.

Our own Justice Deoartment has a little known agency called the Office of Special Investigations or OSI. They have been given the task of locating and providing evidence against Nazi war criminals hiding in the U. S. The OSI has very little to show for the huge budget they’ve been given. The short version is that the OSI framed Demjanjuk as being a horrible war criminal named Ivan the Terrible, using a forged identity card and a horribly suggestive photo lineup shown to some Treblinka Concentration camp survivors.

Stripped of his American citizenship, Demjanjuk was handed over to Israel where he was tried and sentenced to hang. Later an Arizona Department of Public Safety document examiner, Bill Flynn discovered the OSI produced identity card used to convict Demjanjuk was a pasted up forgery. Flynn proved the forgery in court and Demjanjuk was sent home.

That was not the end of the story. The red-faced OSI agents soon made a new case. Now they claim that Demjanjuk was a nasty camp guard at Sobibor Concentration Camp. Ironically it’s also is an air tight alibi for the Ivan the Terrible allegations that brought the earlier death sentence.

The OSI wrangled through the courts again stripping John Demjanjuk of his citizenship and shipped him off to Germany for a Show Trial that very few are watching.

If they convict Demjanjuk his punishment will be to spend the rest of his life in a German nursing home getting very good medical care at the expense of Germany. Demjanjuk is already a broken man without a country so I don’t think the outcome of his trial will make much of a difference.

The real losers in all of this are John Demjanjuk’s innocent family members that have suffered for the last 35 years throughout this epic nightmare.

War is Hell and the causalities still continue. As for the idea of a mini-series, Hollywood stopped making them nearly two decades ago.

September 2010 Update:

From the Associated Press