Sunday 29 November 2009

First, They Came For Demjanjuk

All the way back in 1969, when (indeed, precisely because) many senior and numerous middle-ranking Nazis were still alive, the Germans granted themselves a general amnesty.

That is why they now feel the need to track down any poor Slavic squaddie in his extreme old age in order to “try” him, far beyond absurdity, as an accessory to twenty-eight thousand murders, none of them committed in Germany, a country of which he has never been either a citizen or a resident.

We should take note. To assuage much the same guilt, some poor British squaddie may very well be made to pay for the letting off the hook of every American who really mattered in Afghanistan and Iraq.

5 comments:

  1. He's not just any old Slavic squaddie, though, is he? He's credibly linked to the killing of hundreds of people. The fact that he wasn't acting alone doesn't make him any less of a criminal.

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  2. Is he "credibly linked to the killing" of 28,000 people? That's what he's on trial for.

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  3. Demjanjuk's case is absurd. Not only was he was acquitted in Israel, he is almost on the death bead.

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  4. Yes. As I'm sure you mean, the case against him is absurd.

    But it is also very, very dangerous, not least in the precedent that it sets.

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