Ex-Auschwitz SS guard charged in Germany

It did help point out just how deficient my and some others understanding of the camps is. If you hadn't made that mistake I'm not sure I would have realized just how little I was certain of in that regard. So it was a useful mistake IMO.

 

I should do well here. I'm good at mistakes.

 

The key is being willing to admit them and learn from them. We all make them some (raises hand) more than others. The problem children are those who won't admit it (some even to themselves). In the case of above Wehrmacht is I think often used as meaning the entire German military in WWII and such usage is only an issue if the distinction between the SS and the Heer is important. In this case it was.

 

I was totally aware of your first point but my post was more geared toward your last sentence. While the individuals who did these things are now surely dead, the countries involved need to acknowledge what their countrymen did. Lately, someone in France attempted to do this and was shouted down!

 

The Einsatzgruppen that roamed the front were given copious amounts of alcohol in order to perform their cleansing duties. Also, most of the nitty gritty work within the camps was done by the sondercommandos. Made up of camp prisoners. Just some edumacation here

 

I think part of the reason why finding, convicting, and punishing the perpetrators of the holocaust wasn't widespread in the 60's 50's or even 40's was because it wasn't at the top of most countries priority list. The U.S didn't lose any of it's citizens, (that I know of) to the holocaust, and directly after WW2 was busy preparing for the Cold War with Russia, and the struggle to contain communism. Britain also didn't suffer as a result of the holocaust, and was also busy preparing for the Cold war, and trying to hold onto it's colonies and repay the wars tremendous expenses. France was simply trying to recover physically, mentally, and economically from the war, and was also struggling with it's colonial holdings across the word. They did amazingly little to the Vichy French and German collaborators, and almost nothing to find and prosecute holocaust participants. The Soviet Union could care less what the Germans did to the Jews (even their own citizens), but cared more about exacting revenge on the German military officials and POW's, and was also in the thick of the Cold war, and trying to build a worldwide communist empire. Italy was barely involved in the rounding up of Jews, and simply chose to rebuild and move on after the war. Germany sporadically tried and prosecuted those who participated in the holocaust, but many were never found, or tired due to lack of evidence, they too were trying to rebuild and recover from the war, and were dealing with a partial soviet occupation that divided the country, and it's efforts to bring about justice. All of the Eastern European countries were occupied by Russia, and had no real way of tracking down and trying perpetrators, some simply didn't care. One of the few countries in the world that has been actively searching and "punishing" holocaust participants is Israel. The Israeli Secret Service Mossad has been finding and assassinating former Nazi's and holocaust participants since the state creation in 1948.Herberts Cukurs - Wikipedia