91-year-old German woman charged on Nazi allegations
Source: AP
BERLIN (AP) — German prosecutors say they've charged a 91-year-old woman with 260,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations she was a member of the Nazi SS who served in the Auschwitz death camp complex.
Schleswig-Holstein prosecutors' spokesman Heinz Doellel said Monday the woman, whose name wasn't disclosed due to German privacy laws, is alleged to have served as a radio operator for the camp commandant from April to July 1944.
Prosecutors argue that she can be charged as an accessory because she helped the death camp function. A 94-year-old former SS sergeant at Auschwitz was convicted on the same reasoning earlier this year.
Doellel says there are no indications the woman is unfit for trial, though a court likely won't decide on whether to proceed with the case until next year.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/bb4acf17e6ca4483a3c58f8483a6d987/91-year-old-german-woman-charged-nazi-allegations
= new reply since forum marked as read
and I'm not willing to recount whole of history of the first half of the 20th century. Hitler was a focal point of hope (much like Donald Trump is) for the dispirited German populace. And he gathered like-minded vermin to help devise and spread his demented ideals. There were many Germans who saw thru what was going on and hated it, but they were (or at least FELT they were) powerless to stop what was happening. And folks needed JOBS - and they craved national honor -and they took what the Nazi regime offered them. Soldiers could expect to have to kill - lesser military roles could seem downright mundane. And mundane, with a regular paycheck, was probably pretty comfy after years of poverty and disrespect. Hitler didn't come to power in the 30s by proclaiming his primary goal was to purge the country of undesirables.
Hell, we're seeing the same sort of thing going on against Muslim folks in this country. Look at the kid with the clock! He didn't end up as charred remains, but it's a start - what's been done to him. All those who rose to the occasion in making an example of him - and being confirmed to have done so - how come they're still holding their positions? Shouldn't that school have a lot of open slots because a number of staff quit on principle? Or would it be reasonable to assume there wouldn't be faculty flight, given that those involved would rather not start at the bottom of the pay scale at some new place of employ?
There were likely some Nazi guards who were herding new arrives - poking them to move with their bayonets or rifle butts - who didn't like the predicament they found themselves in. Of course - they did have a choice. They could apply for a transfer 
or throw down their rifle and fall in with the doomed they'd been herding. Which option would you have chosen?
I'm NOT advocating for the holocaust - or for a pass for those on the perpetration side. I AM saying that common sense needs to come into play now and then. Put yourself I this gal's boots. Imagine going to your Nazi officer in charge and telling him your conscience won't let you continue. Realistically consider what fate might await you and what impact your demise would have on the flow of innocents to the ovens.
I WILL concede that if the charges against this gal were that she was a torturous guard who personally beat and killed prisoners - yeah, her prosecution would be fair. But a radio operator???
It's gotta be tough - striving for the ideal all the time. Matter of fact, I married just such a person (OMG! TWICE - now that I think about it!) She's changed thru the years, but her self-loathing makes her life much more complicated than mine - if that makes sense. She's the one that's been on various anxiety meds for the last 30 years. The meds make it possible for her to function in a less-than-perfect world and deal with her less-than-perfect functions therein. We're different in that I don't CARE whether or not what I do turns out perfect in the end. If it's functional and durable - what's not to like?
Thanks for your reply. 
but we are what we are I suppose. I am also in one of those "mixed marriages" where my husband is much more willing to accept things as they are. I suppose opposites attract and probably help balance each other out. I have studied Buddhism, and other eastern religions a lot over the years, and it's one of the things that has helped me deal with the fact that life is not perfect and that people and the world itself oftentimes really sucks.
namaste
Thank you for the link
Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in Poland that had the sadistic "Arbeit Macht Frei"= 'work makes you free' slogan over the entrance gate like the notorious Dachau camp established in 1934 near Munich. His mother and father were young Hungarian Jews transported to Auschwitz in cattle cars. He showed me on his arms where the tattooed id numbers of his parents were located.
The radio operator worked for the commandant, the commander of the extensive Auschwitz network for the SS, the Schutz-Staffel, the powerful Third Reich organization built upon Nazi ideology and responsible for crimes against humanity during WWII, primarily carrying out the Holocaust. This woman didn't work in a hotel in Berlin and clearly knew the function of Auschwitz.
Many German war workers like this woman have lived a full, free life into their 90s, unlike the prisoners and slave laborers in the camps where they worked. Auschwitz and the nearby IG Farben chemical plant exploited prisoners, and the women employed there were under the supervision of SS camp officials in charge who had millions of political prisoners, Romani, Poles, foreigners, homosexuals and Jews, part of Nazi 'Final Solution', tortured, starved, worked to death and exterminated.
PHOTO, Nazi SS camp workers and guards at Bergen-Belsen. German women worked as secretaries, guards, nurses, doctors, domestics, administrators, female companions and in brothels at Nazi labor and concentration camps.
While the Nazi workers alive today may not have all their faculties in tact to recall all and are possibly 'suffering from some dementia' as you say, I'm sure this woman hasn't forgot her time at Auschwitz. And millions of others do remember the events from 70 years ago. People around the world have not forgotten the losses and horrors of that time and will not. My friend well remembers his parents who were prisoners who fortunately survived Auschwitz.
I'm familiar with the history of the war and have uniform insignia of my father when he was in the 7th Army as a 24 year old 1st lieutenant. He gave me these items and others like the SS patches pictured, from the Dachau camp which he helped liberate in April 1945, after receiving the bronze star for courage in combat during the Rhineland Campaign in Germany that I display as my avatar.
PHOTO, liberated prisoners at Auschwitz with Soviet Union military late Jan. 1945. This reminds me of the sad story my father told of Dachau where he saw emaciated, but gleeful, newly freed Polish prisoners who mistakenly drank industrial alcohol to celebrate and perished.
PHOTO, canister of Zyklon B poison crystals from WWII. Zyklon B was used to kill victims by the thousands in the gas chambers of death camps. In the US government collection of Captured Military Records from WWII Nazi Germany in the National Archives where I worked, I saw containers of Zyklon B gas and many objects, documents and materials from the War and Holocaust.
A curator colleague at the National Holocaust Museum works with artifacts including warehouse shelves of hair, teeth, eyeglasses and personal items removed from deceased camp inmates by workers to use for filling mattresses, recycling and aiding German citizens and military of the Third Reich.
Did the allies know when they compiled the lists for the trials at Nuremberg? If they decided she wasn't guilty then just because she worked there, she shouldn't be tried today. On the other hand, I really want to see Dick Cheney put on trial for war crimes and I don't care how old he is. So there is that.
