re: #100 austin_blue

I’m going off topic two posts early. Read this in the NYT today and was wondering what other Lizards thought:

nytimes.com

He wasn’t really a guard, he was a bookkeeper (the only English word with three different double letters in sequence). Does he deserve this prosecution?

I can spin it both ways, but I’m interested in what others think. Is a 20-year old conscript the same as Himmler?

I think he made a useful statement when he admitted moral guilt but then asked if that was the same as criminal guilt. The German nation, as a whole, has tended to admit that it was morally wrong - unlike some other nations that have been discussed today - yet his criminal guilt? He starts off as a conscript with little choice but then volunteers for the SS. From ideology or propaganda? Once joined there is even less choice left than he would have had in the Wehrmacht. The final question to be answered then is if simply joining the SS - with or without a full understanding of what that entailed - was a criminal act in and of itself.

I am glad to not be on that court.