There are many lessons worth remembering from World War II, though it’s unclear whether they will be remembered or they will be remembered for the right reasons. Some of those lessons are about how a nation spiraled into hatred and the nadir of immorality. Others are about how a world, after beating that warmongering nation, allowed it to take a path back into society.
As a boomer whose father fought the Nazis in the Ardennes Forest and freed a concentration camp, and as a Jew, this is not an emotionless subject for me. I was raised to Never Forget, and I can’t and won’t. When I went to Germany in the summer of ’79, I looked at every old man and wondered what he did in the war. But I couldn’t hate Germany or Germans. I chose to let it go.
There were individuals who personally committed unimaginable atrocities. Some escaped culpability for a while until they were found and tried. No doubt some were never found. As learned from the capture of a guard at the Sobibor camp, John Demjanjuk, who was an auto worker in the United States until convicted in 2011, the search never ended.
Last year, Bruno Dey, age 93, was convicted of 5,230 counts of murder for his actions as a 17-year-old guard at the Stutthoff camp. He was tried in juvenile court and was given a two-year suspended sentence. Survivors were outraged at the leniency. He was guard. He committed atrocities.
But the same can’t be said of Irmgard F. She wasn’t a guard, but a secretary to the commandant. She’s 95 years old now. She was a juvenile then. After five years investigation, she has been indicted for her complicity in the deaths of 10,000 human beings.
Public prosecutors in Germany have indicted a 95-year-old woman for her role supporting the Nazi killing machinery as a secretary in a concentration camp, charging her with 10,000 counts of being an accessory to murder, and complicity in attempted murders.
The woman worked between June of 1943 and April of 1945 as a secretary for the camp commander at the Stutthof camp, 20 miles from the Polish city of Gdansk, which was known as Danzig under German rule at the time.
What’s the right question to ask in deciding what to do about Irmgard? What did she do? What did she know? Or is the question now, what purpose is served?
“It’s about the concrete responsibility she had in the daily functioning of the camp,” said Peter Müller-Rakow of the public prosecutor’s offices in Itzehoe, north of Hamburg.
No doubt she had a “concrete” role in the daily functioning of the camp as the commandant’s secretary. But that role was moving papers, not gassing, shooting, and the myriad atrocities committed on prisoners. She is not without blame, as part of the machine that made concentration camps perform their horrific function, but was her blame of a different sort than those who committed the atrocities with their own hands?
“It’s a real milestone in judicial accountability,” said Onur Özata, a lawyer representing survivors in the trial of the former camp secretary. “The fact that a secretary in this system, a bureaucratic cog, can be brought to justice is something new.”
It’s not as if they didn’t know who Irmgard was or what she did. She was a witness against the commandant in 1957.
According to the public broadcaster that interviewed her last year, Ms. F. had been in court as a witness in 1957, when the camp’s commander, Paul Werner Hoppe, went on trial. Mr. Hoppe was convicted of his crimes, but was released in the 1960s and died in 1974. The prosecutors did not provide details of the former camp secretary’s life after she served in Stutthof.
Now, when she’s 95, they have decided that she must pay for her involvement, her complicity? To what end? If she wasn’t deemed sufficiently culpable in the ’50s, what makes her sufficiently culpable now as she’s at the end of her life?
“The court cases are also important because, beyond historical research, they help to document and clarify Nazi crimes, and because they bring the subject to the public’s attention,” said Jens-Christian Wagner, the director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps memorial.
It is important to never forget, to not let Holocaust deniers convince people it never happened, wasn’t as bad as claimed or usurp its atrocities for their own purposes. But that doesn’t justify extending the concept of culpability into an entirely new realm of attenuated atrocities and indicting Irmgard F. at the very end of her life.
If they find another guard alive who, by his own hand, committed atrocities, then he deserves to be prosecuted. But Irmgard knew what she was involved with, and we knew what she was involved with back in 1957 when she was a witness against Hoppe, back when there were far more serious concerns about culpability and who deserved to be prosecuted for their crimes against humanity.
They’ve run out of teenage guards to prosecute, so now they’re on to teenage secretaries. We must never forget, but we have reached the end of the path of prosecution and need to return to the path of redemption. It’s time to let it go.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Excellent post, Scott. It’s somewhat off topic, but it got me thinking about the self-righteous woke, and how most of them are most certainly cheering on this kind of thing without thinking about the fact that all the stupid ignorant shit they’ve said and done is on the ‘foreverweb’. When the pendulum swings back, it’s gonna be a whole lot easier for their inquisitors to collect the evidence of their transgressions.
The righteous tend not to grasp that their absolute certainty at the moment might not survive scrutiny in the future, which is ironic given that’s what they do to those in the past who fail to pass their scrutiny of the moment. Today’s woke are tomorrows transgressors. They just lack the ability to grasp that now, like so many before them.
What a crock. I think anyone involved in this kangaroo court anywhere in the world belongs in a 6×8 cell of their own. It’s been almost 80 years based on how we used to measure generations that’s four generations. Then she was a witness for the DA in 1957 it should have been handled then. Not 63 years later by some self righteous ass. Especially when you stop and think she was a teenager dealing with the SS and the Gestapo when she was assigned to that job and any answer but YES SIR would get you shot on the spot as a Traitor to the State or made an instant inmate in said Prison. They are at this time harmless they can do no more damage. We need the power and effort put towards the current nuts and traitors you sre a proven threat TODAY.
Good to see you’ve moderated your tendency toward extreme hyperbole in your dotage.
“Germans were not forced to be killers. Those who refused to participate were given other assignments or transferred. To this day no one has found an example of a German who was executed for refusing to take part in the killing of Jews or other civilians. Defense attorneys of people accused of war crimes have looked hard for such a case because it would support the claim that their clients had no choice. The Nazi system, however, did not work that way. There were enough willing perpetrators so that coercive force could be reserved for those deemed enemies.” –Doris L. Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust.
There was even less of a chance for Irmgard F., a minor and a civilian, not a member of the SS.
My wife is of German descent, and we finally got to Germany in 2018. Among the things we did there was go to Dachau and take a side trip to Krakow so we could see Auschwitz. My grandfather was in the COE in Europe and was among the soldiers that caught the SS trying to hide the Gardelegen Massacre.
I’m a quite, cynical engineer and still there were several points at Auschwitz at which I almost cried. All of that is a long winded way to say I understand the desire for punishment and, frankly, revenge in the part of the victims and the authorities.
In the case of this secretary I wonder how voluntary her “service” was. Some of the Poles cooperated in this kind of work and some were conscripted. Seems that at least by 1957, if not earlier, she believed that the operations at that camp were wrong. Like you, I see no justice here.
And given that we’re down to this type of prosecution and given the condition of the memory of the surviving victims (and perpetrators) you wonder if we’re beyond the point where justice can actually be achieved.
I’m glad guitar Dave is here to articulate some of my thoughts.
I think it’s fair to say that many of us may have, were we there at the time , also performed those jobs_ secretary , guard etc. it’s easy to declare virtue when you weren’t there…
I’m thankful for GD too, especially if my post disappointed you.
I wasn’t disappointed. Truthfully I often need to read several times to comprehend. Anyway grateful to participate.
It’s reminiscent of Ward Churchill’s take on the victims of 9/11 as “little Eichmanns” for their complicity in the atrocities of western society.
The future of this dynamic when the pendulum swings back will not only be colored by the visibility of their social media, but by their aggressive insistence that teams trump principles and that any critique of atrocities in their own backyards is tantamount to siding with the enemy.
I never thought anyone would use the words “trump” and “principles” in succession.
Congrats.
I find it rather depressing and sad that you can’t read the word (small “t”) without thinking of a certain person.
Ever consider taking a break from the news?
Reclaiming the word.
Let he/she who is without sin, and whose ancestors and teachers and friends and neighbors and everyone any of them knew, back into eternity are also without sin, cast the first stone.
I wondered if any Dr. Mengele supporters would try to take refuge under this post. Some sins are not so easily ignored, nor should they be.
Yes, but there is a major difference between a competent adult choosing to do horrible things and a teen with no life experience basically being forced into something.
Are you saying a victim of sex trafficking should get the same punishment as a pimp?
I’m not the NYT. That’s their job !
One did not say “no” to the SS or some very unpleasant things happed to you and yours. You did not say “no” to the Imperial Japanese Army in the same time period or you would be missing your head. You did say “no” to Saddam Hussein’s Army or you were shot and your family made to watch.
Evil always coerces.
This trial was both not needed and petty. Let it go. She will be judged soon enough.
Let’s not assume facts not in evidence.
I’m of Jewish descent and lost relatives in the camps. Distant ones, but still family.
Giver her age, the situation at the time and the example of Sophie Scholl, I don’t see how she could have said no.
Let it go.
“The quality of mercy is not straind . . .”
Thousands of SS guards who committed atrocities were allowed to live out their natural lives without charges or punishment. Now the pendulum has swung to the point that Germany is prosecuting the clerical staff, even those who were children. The reality of this situation is that these elderly defendants are being tried simply for living too long. It would make just as much sense to prosecute everyone in Germany who was alive prior to May of 1945.
I see most comments here are speculating on whether she did it willingly or not. To me, that’s not the issue here. Justice delayed was justice denied, and this isn’t bringing back. You’re no longer trying the 17-year-old who assisted the Nazi regime; You’re not even trying the 30-year-old whose life has been defined by mistakes in their youth that they hope to forget one day; you’re trying a 95-year-old that is a lifetime away from that transgression. At which point are we willing to consider that she is a completely different person? Is life plus cancer appropriate for the most awful crimes, and if we didn’t do it yesterday we might as well do it today?
I don’t agree. The sentences *have* to be lenient – they’re there to correct a mistake by the system, not to destroy the perps, which no longer exist.
The bloodthirsty demands here are already using arguments that slip from personal action into the vagueness of “responsibility” and it’s a straight line from there to reparation demands from the family and children.
(FWIW, I had a similar reaction to the prosecution of Demjanjuk)
Or is this an Annelisse and Herbert Kappler situation? Kappler as a SS commander committed and was convicted of many massacres in Italy and sentenced to life in prison postwar. His wife Annelisse, a nurse, met him while he was imprisoned and helped him escape prison in Italy to West Germany in 1977, where he died the following year. West Germany refused to return the fugitive or try him themselves.
Was Irmgard F. similarly involved in extralegal behavior as Annelisse Kappler was? (As Christopher Plummer portrayed Herbert Kappler in the 1983 film The Scarlet and The Black, an internet search about Plummer’s death this week included a suggestion to watch the 38-year old flick; putting the story fresh in the mind)…was she simply a secretary, or is there evidence that she might have taken after Irma Grese, a concentration camp matron that began serving the SS at age 19?
Probably not, but are we sure the news article is 100% accurate? Could the prosecutor have much more evidence of more direct involvement, but it simply hasn’t been disclosed yet?
How many shrooms did you eat this morning?
Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee!
I know that video links are strictly the domain of Guitardave and Howl, but I humbly ask this once that the following video be allowed.
Since you asked nicely.
Much appreciated. Geddy Lee’s mother was freed from Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. This inspired Neil Peart to write those lyrics .
I didn’t know that. Thanks.