Nazi Guard Hans Lipschis, 93, Arrested For Wartime Crimes In Auschwitz

This is absurd - the mans 93, it's not justice by this point - it's just holding onto the horrors of the past for the sake of it. I could understand just killing the man, but he's not going to be in a mental state where you can fairly try him, so this is just a public vendetta, it has nothing to do with Justice.

I don't deny the right of the Jewish people for closure in this, but holding onto it to these lengths suggests they don't want closure - ever... Russians, communists, gays, gypsies and the disabled all made their way to the camps, they too should have a part of this.
(Infact, didn't more Russians die during the war? I can't imagine anyone would be ok with the Russians still doing this)

reply to post by hounddoghowlie


Since I seem to be making downright adversaries on taking a stand for this issue ...I might as well throw in all my chips. lol....

You bring up the issue of what to do or how people can say no when death may follow? I say, in all honesty, let it follow if that be the option. No one gets out of life alive. We *ALL* die. Every one of us will, with 100% and absolute certainty, die. No way around that and no exceptions to it. So....there is only one thing we do have control over. How do we die. Do we do it for a reason that matters or do we do it after living in shame or in submission to evil?

If religion isn't a factor, as that settles the issue outright for those who truly do believe in things like Salvation issues or how that translates to any other Faith or system, then it's a basic issue of ...live on your knees or die on your feet?

Specifically, if I found myself to be called upon to murder an innocent? Would I do it if my own life might be taken for failure to comply? Well, we can add complication and complexity into that to make it a 'what if your kid was next' or ' what if you could do more alive', and pull a real brain teaser from a simple issue. I'll look at it simply though No... I wouldn't do it. If it meant I joined the very prisoners whom I refused to murder? Well, again, we *ALL* die ...and I'll know I died on my feet, not evil or on my knees. I can accept and make peace with that.


In terms of time for forgiveness? Well..... The sins of the Father should never follow to the son. This isn't North Korea with their State Policy of '3 generations of punishment'. However, this is still a "Father" the story talks about and he didn't JUST come to people's attention yesterday. He's been known for what he is for quite some time and by more than one national Government. When the last of his kind are dead? Then...and only then...it's over. That's my personal opinion.

All the more troubling as there were specific war crimes carried out by the allies during WW2 which noone was ever held accountable for - like the firebombing of Tokyo or Dresden.

WW2 is perpetually presented as a simplistic black and white morality play where the good guys win and the bad guys are vanquished - subverting the actual important lessons to be learned, all so we never have to think about the morally questionable acts in which we engaged

reply to post by MaxSteiner


Moral Relativism and justifying bad behavior by other bad behavior....is precisely how I believe and history tends to show much of the German evils and horrors came to happen.

What the Allies did or didn't do ...does little or nothing to justify the horrors and evils committed by members of the organizations directly responsible for the systematic murder and extermination of innocent people by the millions. It does nothing to mitigate it, or lessen it.

I don't even say Jews ...because Jews only formed the bulk by sheer number. Millions of others consisted of everything from Christians to Homosexuals to Gypsies. The system this man was a willing part of, by what the process seeks to establish here, was pure black evil. Evil doesn't discriminate and this example sure was no exception to that.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


The Nazi's wouldn't have gotten in or had so much support within the country if not for the acts of the victors in WW1, so I would query how you can question the acts of one side leadiing to the acts of the other.

Lots of countries were dealing with the "Jewish" problem at that point in time for example Stalin's genocide in the Ukraine killed about 7million (reported heavily at the time, but largely forgotten now...) and committed a equivalent purge of Muslims within the USSR which noone seemed to care about then or now even the British wanted to send them all to Uganda or Madagascar...

But the narrative we present is that it was only the evil Germans who did anything and every other country loved the Jews - which prevents us from having to look at our own anti-semitism and war crimes.

strange this holohoax is the only time in history that it is illegal to look into .simon weisel ? more than a few people have shouted him out for being in 7 death camps and the bloke will not show his tatoo ? strange that a man who was in the camp would not shake the hand of simon the weisel calling him an imposter . ps it is against the geneva convention to target a civilian population in war which was the first thing that churchill did does that make him a war criminal nuff said

reply to post by MaxSteiner


It's ironic that you choose the post immediately after I made a point, unbidden, of saying this isn't about the Jews and I didn't mentioned them specifically because they only hold the attention by sheer number killed.

Yet...you focus that reply largely on Jews as the basis of the Holocaust. Yes, the Nazis had a special core of black hate for the Jews.....and Christians, and Gays, and Gypsies, and Russians, and Polish who didn't look right, and Germans who weren't Nazi enough and and and...... The list goes on to include a very wide variety of innocent men, women and children who were exterminated with the cold precision of making widgets on an assembly line ...in places like Auschwitz. Places like this 2 legged animal, in the story, was a Guard and helped make happen.

The fact you choose to focus this on the Jews, to make it a Jewish argument on the basis of why it shouldn't be seen as evil as it was, DOES tell me a great deal about your mindset and approach to the topic, if not a lack of comprehensive historical knowledge of what actually happened in World War II.

Also, I'll fully agree that the way World War I ended had everything to do with how World War II started. On that point, you're right. The defeat of Germany wasn't enough. They had to utterly and totally humiliate and obliterate Germany as any power worthy of note, following the fighting. That left the German people in such a state of despair and outright anger, as history does record, they actually supported the early stages of the rise of an evil, sick monster as came to lead them ...and the evil he brought right behind him.

There are events and there are times in the history of man that stand apart from ALL others. They hold a special place. Either for very good reasons, or more commonly, for VERY VERY bad ones. World War II was a BAD war for all concerned and BY all concerned. However, the rise and fall of the 3rd Reich transcends the war and the conduct of anyone who was party to it. It will, by itself, stand apart of one of the very worst examples of Human History known to date ...and does, in every way. The attempt to compare it to anything of that time is just terribly misplaced, in my view as a person and student of history.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Attacking my knowledge of WW2 because I don't agree with your narrative is a bit ott, it's such a broad subject that noone is correct in it, the only people who are wrong are those who think they have a handle on it all.

Wasn't my intention to make it a jewish issue, just sticking to the topic of the thread, seems difficult to separate it from that given the OP.

(Like how you reiterate my first post back at me though lol)

Originally posted by billdadobbie
strange this holohoax is the only time in history that it is illegal to look into .simon weisel ? more than a few people have shouted him out for being in 7 death camps and the bloke will not show his tatoo ? strange that a man who was in the camp would not shake the hand of simon the weisel calling him an imposter . ps it is against the geneva convention to target a civilian population in war which was the first thing that churchill did does that make him a war criminal nuff said

Wow.. Okay.. when we get to the gutter of questioning whether the Holocaust even happened... I'm off the thread before my next replies get me banned. I'm flat out not capable of remaining civil to that level of willful ignorance on this specific topic .....and am a big enough Rabbit to admit that.

There are times I really, honestly wonder where people come from with this stuff...and with that, I'll shut up before I do say more than I can take back.

Thing is even if this 93 year old man is found guilty then imprisoned that makes us just as bad as the Nazis!

You cannot in all good conscience imprison a 93 year old Man. That's got to be considered cruel and unusual punishment in any civilised nation hence against our basic human rights in my opinion!

Not saying these people should not atone or be held accountable for their sins, but what do we do with them in the present era?

He will meet his maker soon enough, I say let YHWH judge him.

What about the millions who didn't get to live ninety three years? Do they not deserve something?

Those children who didn't get to see, oh say, their ninth year, much less their ninth decade...

Vengeance? Not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes... How many millions did men like this animal murder? How many more had they not been stopped?

Justice is sometimes slow, but it generally comes along at some point. Vengeance and justice sometimes come in the same package.

It was either starve or work as a guard. Instead of starving this man chose to be employed. Had he refused orders he would have been dead. People think I am going to far when I say I want ALL district attorneys, judges, police and congressmen tried for crimes against humanity. They tell me they are just doing their jobs. They tell me that those people are good men doing their jobs and are not corrupt.

So here I am telling you folks that this guard was merely doing his job, staving off hunger and homelessness or even execution. He led the life of a normal, honest man for 60 years. He did not continue he previous actions when the job and threat were gone.

Should the state really take on the responsibility for a 93 year old man, including his medical care, just because some people are still upset about how he did his job? Uproot him from a 60 year life of being a productive citizen and toss him in a cell because he did what he was told? Seems like an awful tragedy.

You cannot have it both ways. If we go after these men in the surreal sense of some kind of mystical justice and do not actively attempt to bring those who oppress us now to the same fate then we are all hypocrites. Or are the chosen people really so special that a crime against them is unforgivable while crimes against us common folk are just "the system"?

People are imprisoned right now in this nation for being poor. For low level drug offenses that are actually medical problems. People lose their homes today unjustly and end up on the streets.
Then those same people are put in jail for being on the street. I have a friend who is doing 2 years in prison because he lived in a tent and had no address.

And yet people fixate over a 93 year old man who may or may not have been over zealous in his job? I do not get it.

Originally posted by seagull
What about the millions who didn't get to live ninety three years? Do they not deserve something?

Those children who didn't get to see, oh say, their ninth year, much less their ninth decade...

Vengeance? Not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes... How many millions did men like this animal murder? How many more had they not been stopped?

Justice is sometimes slow, but it generally comes along at some point. Vengeance and justice sometimes come in the same package.

All very pertinent questions. I think we as human beings should pay more attention to learning from our mistakes, which we don't.

Vengeance and justice are rarely the same thing. I don't think the old goat should be imprisoned at the age of 93, kinder to hang him, but that's another kettle of fish.

Originally posted by Hopechest
Its all about the money now really.

Nope.

Germany paid it's last repartition payment to UK last month.

Originally posted by MaxSteiner
All the more troubling as there were specific war crimes carried out by the allies during WW2 which noone was ever held accountable for - like the firebombing of Tokyo or Dresden.

WW2 is perpetually presented as a simplistic black and white morality play where the good guys win and the bad guys are vanquished - subverting the actual important lessons to be learned, all so we never have to think about the morally questionable acts in which we engaged

But the question is should a 93 year old man be held accountable for his crimes? by that token,should the tens of thousands of those who flew with bomber command be held accountable for their perceived crimes? well there are those who have stated that as a Lithuanian,Lisisch was not forced to become a death camp guard,i.e he volunteered,as did those who manned the Stirling.Halifax and Lancaster bombers of bomber command who devastated German cities nightly,personally I believe that bomber command did the right thing,they carried the war to the Nazi heartland and surely hastened WW2 to a swifter conclusion.But by the same token the Nazi's generally and genuinely believed that Jews,Slavs etc were"untermensch"that deserved nothing less than extermination.who is to judge which of the perpetrators should be brought to justice and who should be regarded as heros?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Somehow I doubt it's ignorance... It's agenda, pure and simple. He knows damned well that the Holocaust happened, yet it suits his purposes to deny the evidence of hundreds of historians, and the Nazi's themselves...

reply to post by nake13


You do raise a genuinely difficult question, are there any universal heroes in war?
I'm sure there must be a historical example of someone upheld by the victorious and defeated as a hero, but I can't think of any off hand.

I think the whole issue of SS death camp guards deserves a reexamination in some ways - common consensus on this thread is that there's no excuse for following illegal orders.
But we have a modern example of this in the form of Abu Ghraid - where American soldiers carried out acts that they knew were illegal because their higher ups said it was ok - the more time goes on, the less human the detainees are seen and the worse the abuses become until you end up having people crucified under your watch.

And yet for some reason we don't have reports of soldiers refusing to carry out their orders en mass in this instance. (Only one I've ever heard of was some SAS who refused to be posted back at a torture camp again and the MOD granted the request).

If the whole point of the Nuremberg trials and Nazi killing/hunting is to teach us that "only following orders" isn't a defense it doesn't seem to have taken does it?

That's pretty much my problem with the forced narrative of WW2 - we tell ourselves we were nothing like the Germans, that they were evil and it's a historical one off. But was it really?
Not holding ourselves accountable or even accepting that we could carry out evil acts during war because we're the good guys is a huge mistake, it makes us morally complacent and we end up thinking it's ok to level a country and impose regime change without a UN mandate on the back of some known fabricated evidence...

edit: ==> (Not comparing WW2 to Iraq 2 other than as an example of the abuses that occur when a country illegally invades another based on false evidence, thought I'd best mention that )

Am I the only one that sees the irony of this?

Arguing about somebody else's crimes against humanity on a server based in a country that not only tried to avoid the war, but managed to profit immensely from it.

Laughable.

Justice, peace, blah, blah, blah, none of those words belong in this thread. This is about vengeance and denial, nothing more.

If we actually tried everybody that took part in a 'crime against humanity' (using the definitions as used against this man), there isn't one country from the war that wouldn't have thousands on trial.

reply to post by peck420


It's even worse than that, IBM sold the Nazi's the technology to keep track of how many people were sent to the gas chambers...

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by peck420
Justice, peace, blah, blah, blah, none of those words belong in this thread. This is about vengeance and denial, nothing more.

If we actually tried everybody that took part in a 'crime against humanity' (using the definitions as used against this man), there isn't one country from the war that wouldn't have thousands on trial.

If we at least tried some of the more recent cases of crimes against humanity this arrest would have some validity. It is consistently being shown that only those who find themselves on the losing side face legal recourse, and even then, successful prosecutions are so few and far between as to be laughable. And that, is largely due to the corporate bodies that often back both sides of conflict and have the most to lose from any trial, ensuring that the accused are lawyered up to the hilt, the case dismissed on a technicality.

No justice here for the victims.

This man is so old that he can add nothing to the story and probably won't even live to see trial. There have been, by most accounts, numerous opportunities where he could have been captured but was able to slip through the net, why wait until now? Because he is too old, and no threat to anyone's reputation, with anything that he may be able to reveal easily dismissed as the ramblings of senility. It is an expensive puppet show, no more, no less.