Wanderlust

Tag: nazi

  • Holocaust trial: Germany tries former SS guard at Stutthof camp

    Johann R in court in Muenster, 6 November Image copyright EPA Image caption The face of the defendant, seen here in court, has been obscured by court order

    A former SS guard has gone on trial in Germany accused of complicity in mass murder at a Nazi death camp during World War Two.

    Identified as Johann Rehbogen, the 94-year-old served in the Stutthof camp in what is now northern Poland from June 1942 to September 1944.

    He denies knowing anything about atrocities committed there.

    Because he was not yet aged 21, he is being tried in a juvenile court in Münster, western Germany.

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    The former guard, who uses a wheelchair, faces a sentence of 15 years if convicted but is unlikely to serve any time in prison because of his advanced age.

    Image copyright AFP Image caption Stutthof has been preserved as a museum Image copyright AFP Image caption Crematorium at Stutthof Image copyright AFP Image caption Bunks for inmates at Stutthof

    The defendant is “accused in his capacity as a guard of participating in the killing operations”, said Mr Brendel.

    It has still to be determined whether the other former SS guard is fit to stand trial.

    What was Stutthof?

    Image copyright Stutthof Museum Image caption SS leader Heinrich Himmler (centre) visited Stutthof

    Located near the city of Danzig (now Gdansk), it was originally an internment camp before being officially designated a concentration camp in 1942.

    From June 1944, prisoners were murdered in a gas chamber.

    More than 65,000 people died in Stutthof before it was liberated by the Soviet Army on 9 May 1945.

    Who is the defendant?

    Johann Rehbogen was captured by the US Army after the war but returned to civilian life, working as a landscape architect for the North Rhine-Westphalia state authorities.

    Questioned by police last year, he denied knowing about atrocities in the camp. Although he was not named by the court in Münster, his name has been published by the Wiesenthal Center, which investigates Nazi war crimes.

    “If one looks at how many evil doings and crimes were perpetuated, one can understand why elderly people too have to face prosecution,” said Mr Brendel.

    “Germany owes it to the families and victims to prosecute these Nazi crimes even today. That is a legal and moral question.”

    How do survivors regard the trial?

    Relatives of those murdered at Stutthof are attending the trial. Among them is one of the plaintiffs, Ben Cohen, whose grandmother Judy Meisel is a survivor of the camp.

    He told the BBC it was good for her to see Germany pursue the case.

    “Her being able to witness even some of this process, even from afar, is a sense of closure,” he said.

    “To have Germany listening to her is very powerful for her.

    “I speak to her all the time and I can see a new perspective that this gives her on things, so that could maybe be considered a form of closure. But closure is a difficult word in this context.”

  • Nazi protect Palij deported by US to Germany

    Students protest outside the home of Jakiw Palij in the Queens borough of New York City - 24 April 2017 Image copyright Reuters Symbol caption There Was anger amongst citizens while it emerged Palij used to be dwelling in the Queens area of new York City

    A 95-12 months-antique former Nazi collaborator who served in the notorious SS as a labour camp protect in International War Two has arrived in Germany after a long deportation fight within the US.

    Jakiw Palij has been stateless due to the fact that a federal judge revoked his US citizenship in 2003.

    For years Germany refused to accept him as he by no means had German nationality.

    After arriving in Düsseldorf he used to be being taken to a care house for the aged, German studies say.

    The US ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell, praised Germany’s new government for resolving the case.

    Image copyright AFP Symbol caption Palij, observed here in 1957, denied involvement in Nazi crimes

    Jews have been sent to the camps as a part of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to murder more than million Jews in occupied Poland.

    Trawniki also housed a pressured labour camp the place more than 6,000 Jews were murdered on a single day – THREE November 1943.

    A White Space commentary stated Palij served as an armed protect and had performed an “fundamental role” in making sure Jews have been killed.

    He arrived in the US in 1949 and was once given citizenship in 1957.

    Even If a US court ruled he had assisted in the persecution of prisoners, he was once not discovered individually chargeable for deaths. His deportation used to be ordered in 2004 after a judge said he had falsified his immigration application.

    Palij himself has denied collaborating with the Nazis. He instructed the Big Apple Times in 2003 that he had by no means set foot in a camp and handiest agreed to work as a guard because he believed the Nazis might kill his family if he refused.

    Read more on the Holocaust:

    The Holocaust year through 12 months

    Who are the lacking million?

    The hidden graves of the Holocaust

    Why did deportation take so long?

    US authorities were not able to influence Germany, Ukraine or Poland to take him in. He never had German citizenship and originated from an area of Poland that is now Ukraine.

    The US ambassador stated a metamorphosis of middle got here with the advent of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new cupboard earlier this yr.

    Centre-left Foreign Minister Heiko Maas instructed Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper (in German) that Germany had a “moral duty” to “come to phrases with and face as much as the crimes of the Nazi reign of terror”.

    The website pronounced that he used to be taken on arrival in Germany to a care facility in Ahlen near the western town of Münster.

  • Munich replaces ‘disrespectful’ Holocaust memorials

    Memorial to Landauers in Munich, 26 Jul 18 Image copyright EPA Image caption The First of Munich’s new Holocaust plaques went up on Thursday

    The government in Munich have began installing new Holocaust memorials to replace brass cobblestone reminders of the Nazis’ sufferers.

    The cobblestones are considered disrespectful by way of Bavarian Jewish leader Charlotte Knobloch and some other critics, mainly as a result of they get dirty and are trodden on.

    They additionally exist in more than 1,000 puts in Europe.

    In Munich they’re being changed with new plaques and steles.

    These are being installed at the remaining identified addresses of Holocaust victims. Alternatively this initiative is to this point simplest taking place in Munich.

    Atmosphere the reminiscence of Holocaust victims in stone Germany to combat anti-Semitism in schools The Holocaust year by means of year

    the town says the brand new memorial machine will commemorate 10,000 Munich men, women and youngsters murdered by way of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933-1945.

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    Media captionPreserving the reminiscences of Holocaust victims

    In December Bavaria’s excellent court sponsored the town’s 2015 resolution to interchange the cobblestones, or “Stolpersteine” (“stumbling stones” in English), which lie within the pavement outdoor victims’ former properties or workplaces.

    but the stones, created by way of the German artist Gunter Demnig, even have many supporters in Germany and elsewhere. A petition to prevent Munich getting rid of them has gathered more than ONE HUNDRED,000 signatures, Deutsche Welle reports.

    A plaque installed on Thursday commemorates Tilly and Franz Landauer. Tilly died in Auschwitz dying camp in 1944, and Franz in Westerbork camp within the Netherlands, in 1943.

    Franz used to be the brother of former Bayern Munich soccer membership president Kurt Landauer, who fled to Switzerland in 1939.

    The Primary steles, colored gold and silver, additionally went up on Thursday. They commemorate philologist Friedrich Crusius, who was mentally sick and murdered through the Nazis in 1941, and Jewish couple Paula and Siegfried Jordan, additionally murdered in 1941, who were art curators.

    In the heart of Berlin a memorial which include nearly THREE,000 stone blocks commemorates the six million Jews murdered by means of the Nazis.

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