Nazi Hermit

Essentially you're asking if crimes against humanity should, like milk cartons, carry an expiry date? No, I don't think they should. Their perpetrators should be hunted to the ends of the Earth.

Not saying that this one in particular is guilty of such a crime, of course. That would need proving first. And his death makes it all a non-issue anyway.
 
I suppose one could attempt to make the point that if stawinoga could be shown to have been waffen SS, and that he might not have been involved with the atrocities of the regular SS. Well, Forgiveness may be possible. But personally, I've got real strong feelings against nazis
 
At least he's gone to the trouble of actually looking like a Hermit should look. He's obviously taken the trouble to look the part but once you shave off the long beard and remove the long staff you've still got a member of the SS hiding behind veneer.

I was sympathetic until i read..

"apparently he was very proud he was in the SS."
 
Atom said:
At least he's gone to the trouble of actually looking like a Hermit should look. He's obviously taken the trouble to look the part but once you shave off the long beard and remove the long staff you've still got a member of the SS hiding behind veneer.

I was sympathetic until i read..

"apparently he was very proud he was in the SS."
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But there were 2 sides of the ss The black uniformed SS ran the death camps and stayed well away from the front lines. The waffen SS
really was an elite combat force and had nothing to do with gassing Slavs, Russians, Gypsies, and Jews.
 
Not all Nazis committed war crimes, ya' know. A "nazi" was just a person who believed in the nazi party ideals ....that doesn't make one a war criminal.

Baron Max
 
Baron Max said:
Not all Nazis committed war crimes, ya' know. A "nazi" was just a person who believed in the nazi party ideals ....that doesn't make one a war criminal.

Baron Max
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Not just believed in but joined the party. And while I understand the party members were shown a lot benfits (like better jobs), I've still got some heartache with nazis.
 
snake river rufus said:
But there were 2 sides of the ss The black uniformed SS ran the death camps and stayed well away from the front lines. The waffen SS
really was an elite combat force and had nothing to do with gassing Slavs, Russians, Gypsies, and Jews.
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Yeah the same 'elite' heroes who shot one hundred unarmed British troops who had been collected and paraded on a minor road off the Rue du Paradis.

Their equipment was taken from them, they were marched into a paddock of a farm and shot until every single one of them was dead.

How heroic! :cool:
 
Atom said:
Yeah the same 'elite' heroes who shot one hundred unarmed British troops who had been collected and paraded on a minor road off the Rue du Paradis.

Their equipment was taken from them, they were marched into a paddock of a farm and shot until every single one of them was dead.

How heroic! :cool:
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They did the same to a lot of soldiers, including some of ours and I didn't use the word heroic.
 
Atom said:
Yeah the same 'elite' heroes who shot one hundred unarmed British troops who had been collected and paraded on a minor road off the Rue du Paradis. Their equipment was taken from them, they were marched into a paddock of a farm and shot until every single one of them was dead.
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Condemning an entire group of people for the actions of only a few is irrational.

Do you hate all Muslims because a few Muslims blow up some people?

Baron Max
 
So merely joining the SS means you should be condemned for life? Interesting. Reminds me of a story an Austrian friend of mine told me.

From memory, his great uncle (?) was about 19 or 20 years old, and their family was pretty poor. In order to make ends meet, he joined the SS. For a few months he was assigned as a guard at one of the POW camps, until being reassigned to the Eastern front. After a few days, a tank run over and crushed his legs. As you can guess, he didn't survive.

So the question here is, does the above fellow deserve to be condemned?
 
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Now his friend Julius Leonowicz said he always knew Mr Stawinoga, known as Fred, had a secret but did not want to reveal it until he died.

He said he heard the tale from a friend of the prisoner of war and that Mr Stawinoga had confirmed it to him.
Talking to BBC News Mr Leonowicz said: "He did serve in the German army, he was in the SS and he was not one of the nicest chaps in the SS.

"I know he was in the SS because I spoke to a friend of his and apparently he was very proud he was in the SS."
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Holy hearsay batman! "My friend and the dead guy said so, so it must be true"
 
Mountainhare said:

So the question here is, does the above fellow deserve to be condemned?
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The basic question suggests some terrible implications for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The way around those implications is to say yes, the fellow deserves some condemnation. The question is a matter of degrees. He wasn't Hitler. He wasn't stuffing people into the ovens. But he was allegedly not a nice guy, allegedly by his own confession. And that word "allegedly" raises the obvious consideration: We cannot condemn this ring road hermit; the accusation is founded entirely in hear-say. About all most of us can say is that he allegedly claimed to have been SS. It might explain a few things about his peculiar, self-imposed withdrawal from societal convention, but I think going out of our way to pile on condemnation compels us to overlook potentially-valuable inquiries. I mean, the guy has spent a long time withdrawn from society, perhaps in a self-imposed penance. It would make for a fascinating novel, at least. Don't be surprised if we see some sort of loosely-based story along these lines coming out in the next couple of years.
 
And how much responsibility do you accept for the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan? After all, your tax dollars fund the war. At least the soldiers have the balls to put themselves in the front line.
 
You don't get in the SS by being a nice guy. Serves him right, I guess, to live out his life in squalor and homelessness.
 
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