Holocaust Survivors Admit Forming Death Squad to Kill Nazis

[ECH1969]

As if taking a page out of Steven Spielberg's screenplay for his new motion picture "Munich," several Holocaust survivors shocked many when they admitted they formed a special death squad to hunt down Nazi war criminals after World War II.

They conceded it was a group effort less concerned with bringing their persecutors to trial than with personally taking revenge on their tormentors.

The survivors said they hunted the former SS officers who headed the death camps executing and poisoning hundreds of them.

During a TV broadcast in Israel, the death sqaud members, some of whom fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, described hunting down SS officers in the dead of night. While wearing British or American military uniforms and officers' insignia, they said they dragged the former SS killers out of their homes and killed them execution-style.

http://www.postchronicle.com/commentary/article_2122721.shtml

[Pavulon]

1. I have a hard time finding pity for Death Camp SS(NT)

[xultar]

2. This is troubling to me though it seems justified in some strange way.

[benburch]

3. All I have to say is...

nice shooting.

[TheDebbieDee]

5. I'll second that!

[Cleita]

4. The Israelis essentially did the same. Sometimes they brought

them to trial if they were a high profile Nazi like Adolph Eichman, but there are rumors out in the netherworld that many were out and out executed when they knew no one would inquire.

[Chautauqua]

6. Considering

Considering the number of those butchers who were given safe haven by the OSS/CIA under Paperclip and other post-war operations and the number who were happily given safe haven under Die Spinne and ODESSA, I really feel very little sympathy for these mass murderers.

On a related note, it looks like Demjanjuk (sic) is finally going to jail. Remember that his big defense was "I'm not Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka, I'm Ivan the Bloody of Sobibor!".

[MessiahRp]

7. I disagree with an eye for an eye...

But I don't think I can blame anyone who suffered through the Holocaust for wanting revenge.

Rp

[FreedomAngel82]

32. Right

I personally would rather see someone rot in prison a slow and painful death. They want you to kill them so they don't have to go to prison. I'd rather send them there to die in a square. Of course that's just me since I believe in the afterlife and reincarnation.

[LostinVA]

44. The thing is, the HUGE majority never saw a day of prison

Many became mayors, businessmen, etc... they had successful happy lives. Hell, one even became president of Austria. All of this, while Holocaust survivors went back to their hometowns and given nothing, not even their confiscated homes. Some were even murdered by anti semites after surviving the horror of the camps.

I understand their motive. Justice given.

[ovidsen]

8. No surprise here

I'm no fan of terminal vengeance, summary executions or other forms of lynching, but if there's one group I'll decline judgement on, it's this one. I've seen stories like this before. The death camp survivors who hunted down their "masters" are now dying themselves, and telling their story to their children.

Where did you find this "Post Chronicle" website, by the way? Some of the stuff on it wanted to make me hold my nose...

[ECH1969]

9. It was on a google link I found

[jmm]

12. Hold your nose is putting it politely

My "favorite" part of the site was its description of Oliver North who is one of their columnists

http://www.postchronicle.com/columnists/

Oliver L. North - was born in San Antonio, Texas, but was raised in upstate New York. In 1968, he graduated from the United States Naval Academy, was commissioned in the U.S. Marines, and sent to Vietnam to serve as a Marine rifle platoon commander. His decorations for courage and bravery include the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with a "V" for Valor, two Purple Hearts, and three Navy Commendation Medals. In August 1981, he was ordered to the White House for duty with the National Security Council staff, and was named deputy director of political-military affairs. A central figure in world events during the past several years, retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North has provoked great controversy while gaining the respect of the vast majority of Americans. He is best known for the role he played in carrying out President Reagan's orders to support freedom and democracy in Central America. Today, North is the chief executive officer of Guardian Technologies International, a Virginia-based manufacturer of protective equipment for law enforcement. He is also the president of Freedom Alliance, a non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting the principles of individual liberty, a strong defense, and traditional morality in national policy.

[troubleinwinter]

26. Ugh....

There's a site I won't be returning to, ever. Unless I'm looking for a book by Anne Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reily, Rush Limbaugh or Nancy Reagan.

The article in the OP has ZERO sources at all, "a TV show". Ohkay...

Sorry I went there at all. Ew.

[ovidsen]

63. That's patriotism

It's common knowledge that raping and killing nuns advances the cause of freedom and democracy.

Not. :banghead:

[tigereye]

70. yup

"traditional morality in national policy."

yup, that would be the death squads Reagan loved so well....

It does put an interesting spin on the OP though. I'd prefer people ( no matter how heinous their crimes) to be brought to justice in the open, where everyone can see, rather than in the dead of night. JMO

[newswolf56]

10. Having personally known several Holocaust survivors, also...

people whose entire European roots were exterminated, I wholeheartedly applaud the avengers. They and the millions of men, women and children who did not survive were betrayed by every government on earth (save that of Israel, which did not exist until after 1948). So betrayed, and in the aftermath of war forsaken, the path of vengeance was their only possible path to justice.

That there are posters on this forum who seem to think otherwise deeply shames me.

[Crunchy Frog]

11. I can't say that I blame them. n/t

[mainegreen]

13. Wow, avenger murder with murder without a trail.

Real justifiable. Any person who commited these acts on captured SS soldiers is a murderer. Its not manslaughter. Its not justifiable. Its not legal. Its not moral.

Anyone who commited these acts should be brought to trial for murder-1. Period. There is no way to say these acts are ok without debasing everything that is right. It makes these people every bit as bad as the nazis who did it to them. It doesn't matter who started it. Murder is wrong.

[newswolf56]

14. So by your logic our American Aboriginal ancestors were wrong...

to rise up and hunt down their white oppressors -- even though (and identical to the Jews) there was no court on earth to which they could apply for justice?

[mainegreen]

19. Bad analogy. There were courts (and still are) thats purpose was to try

these people.

[newswolf56]

21. Historical revisionism (or ignorance of history) on your part:

Until the formation of Israel in 1948, there was no venue anywhere on the planet for the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust to turn to: their status as Displaced Persons denied them access to national court systems (DPs are by definition people without a country), and the Nuremberg investigators didn't give a damn: the Nuremberg trials were little more than show trials -- prosecute the Nazi leaders as a distraction while all the unterführers were being actively recruited into the Western intelligence, defense and Big Business apparatus: American Big Business in particular loved Hitler, Mussolini and fascism in general -- financed it, encouraged it, gleefully recruited its executives and technicians after World War II and continued the (now nearly successful) effort to impose fascism here at home. Fascism didn't die in 1945; it merely went temporarily underground.

The Jews were forsaken and knew it -- the biggest single motive for the founding of Israel. Like American Aboriginals, they had nowhere to turn for justice -- precisely why the analogy is so accurate.

But what is most appalling is to see the obscene extent to which Nazi propaganda is taking hold on the Left.

[gulfcoastliberal]

25. Hear hear. nt

[mainegreen]

57. Did you just accuse me of being influenced by nazi propaganda?

My family was nearly wiped out by by the bombing of Rotterdam. Theirs was part of a small group of houses that amazingly survived. My entire family had to flee to Indonesia. Everyone in my parents generation stills hates 'stinking germans'. Don't even try that Nazi propaganda crap. It's offensive.

Just because some of us like the rule of law, and believe in the important of transparent justice doesn't make us nazi sympathizers. Are you positive that everyone murdered was guilty as accused? No, you can't be, because there were no trials. As far as I'm concerned, without a trial, there is a chance they were innocent. Probably most were guilty, and did deserve death (if it's possible to deserve death, which I may be just to liberal to accept), but there was a chance some weren't.

I'm against nazis murdering people without a trial, I'm against jews murdering people without a trial, I'm against Bush murdering people without a trial. It does not matter who's doing it to whom, murder can *not* be rationalized into justice.

[newswolf56]

68. You are still avoiding the fact there was no court system for the Jews...

to turn to until 1948 -- the founding of Israel -- so that the "trial" demanded by your legalistic (or pacifist) vision was impossible. If the Jewish people had waited even until 1948 -- the tracking of Nazi criminals that led to Eichmann's execution was begin by these very people you damn -- all their tormentors would have escaped.

With all due respect, I didn't specifically accuse you of anything. But it is dreadfully true that Jew-hatred both subtle and blatant -- Nazi propaganda in any case -- has taken strong roots in the American Left, and to deny the extent to which the Jewish people were forsaken is in fact to parrot a Nazi talking point.

If your hostility to Jewish self-defense is an expression of pacifism, just say so and we'll end this here: I won't normally debate a pacifist for the same reason I won't normally debate an anti-gun fanatic: it's a waste of time, thought and words.

As to your Dutch origins and your family's ability to take refuge in the Dutch colonial empire -- and again with all due respect -- I don't think you want to pursue that topic much further: Dutch pacifism was one of the main reasons Hitler was able to overrun France so quickly in 1940, and Dutch imperialism was far from benign. Unlike most Americans, I am NOT ignorant of history.

[The Magistrate]

77. As A Matter Of Curiousity, Sir

How did your people fare there in the Dutch East Indies through the war?

[mainegreen]

88. Badly. They ended up fleeing again to Texas.

Hence me being an american (and the only person in my family to speak english as a native language).

Interestingly, while my mother's side of the family is dutch, my father's is french. He fled to algeria, and then Morocco (or the other way, around I forget). At some point, he too left for America. My mother and him met in NYC at Coney Island (sp?).

[The Magistrate]

89. Did They Get Out Before The Japanese Arrived, Sir?

The occupation there, and its aftermath, are among the more ghastly unknown episodes of the last century.

[mainegreen]

90. They did, fortuanately. My grandfather worked for Esso Oil.

He was an accountant of some sort, hence why they moved to Texas (oil).

Oh, how oil affects us all.

[depakid]

43. Did they have a reasonable belief that the "courts"

would render justice?

or were they still subsumed in a system where social norms and convential morality and order had broken down?

Like another poster stated above, I find the ethics here troublesome. I don't believe in capital punishment- yet paradoxically, I find myself thinking that these men had just cause.

A slippery slope, I know....

[Raksha]

102. I'm against the death penalty too...

...but I've always found PERSONAL revenge much easier to understand than the death penalty, which I see as cold-blooded judicial murder. These were people who had suffered personally and had seen their families murdered by the people they killed. And as another poster pointed out, they were DPs and there was no court in the world they could appeal to for justice.

[FreedomAngel82]

33. It just turns you like them

Just like with the death penalty. You're no longer any better than they are and you yourself become a murder.

[DiverDave]

36. Lets do a scenario, shall we?

A group takes you, you wife, your kids, and everyone that you care for and TORTURES and MURDERS them, some of them in front of you. all the while laughing and stealing the gold from THEIR TEETH.

Sorry, we are at odds on this one. I would gladly, with no remorse at ALL, kill them too. Inflicting the most pain I could.

Another old saying: Live by the sword, die by the sword.

[No Exit]

127. Hey, can I ask you something?

Is your posting name Diver Dave on any other forums?

I am NOT accusing you of anything. It's just that I met a Diver Dave on another forum, and I was just wondering.

[DiverDave]

142. Yeah, I saw that on the "other forum"

and I bet he was never a scuba diver.
I taught PADI courses on Maui for 12 years and have, literally, thousands of dives under my weightbelt.

So, no, I'm not that guy.

[Jara sang]

15. Completely justifiable.

Holocaust survivors lived beyond hell.

[tabasco]

16. When is the award ceremony?

They deserve medals.

[Maru Kitteh]

119. I'll donate to the award fund.

nt

[Zhade]

17. That's not exactly justice.

They might want to think about the whole "abyss" thing.

[Octafish]

18. Brits did it, too.

They also asked former concentration camp survivors to participate in their revenge, including Moshe Tavor.

[Ron Green]

20. Old Testament revenge

is much of what's wrong with the world, even today. Fundamental monotheism, without a provision for forgiveness, begets a world view that "I can kill my enemy because he wronged me (or my family, or my country, or my homies), without either seeking legal remedy OR being changed by the process of forgiveness." We see it in the Middle East, in the 'hood, and now, since 9/11, on the world stage with the United States as the avenging party.

[AgadorSparticus]

30. I love what Ghandi said too: an eye for an eye leaves the whole world

blind. Revenge is the easy way out. Forgiveness is a hell of a lot of work. Nicely said, RonGreen. :applause:

[Ron Green]

35. Thanks, and for your Ghandi reminder too. I'm surprised at how much

"payback" thinking is found on this board, but perhaps it's a trickle-down thing from our own leaders. For my part, I'd love to slap * around a little bit, but I know in my heart I'm expected to forgive him.

:)

[AngryAmish]

56. Ghandi drank his own urine

[Codeine]

61. OMG!

:rofl: :rofl:

[AgadorSparticus]

72. well then, that SURELY negates anything positive he accomplished!

:crazy:

BTW, it's not an isolate concept. I gotta run but I'll post later about it.

[LostinVA]

93. And basically allowed his wife to die

by withholding meds... although he would always take meds when he was ill!

[AgadorSparticus]

138. nevermind the fact that he was happily married for 62 yrs

and was responsible for uplifting millions of indian women above second class status in a heavily patriarchal society.

But go ahead and denigrate a man who freed an entire subcontinent from imperialist overlords using nonviolence.

Who next? Martin Luther King, Jr? That'll be fun too....

[AgadorSparticus]

139. It's a concept from Aruveydic medicine. But hey, lets just mock what

we don't know because we are so superior. BTW, it's not isolated to just India. It is used around the world. But it sure is a nice way to assume that the brown people are just dumb, barbarics.

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~issues/fall02/urine.html

[AngryAmish]

147. Jim Morrison also drank his urine

It is still gross. BTW, never call me a racist again.

[AgadorSparticus]

148. if you don't want people to think you are a racist, then don't give people

reason to. why did you bring it up in the manner that you did?

that it's gross so that it will be okay to mock and engage in character assassinations of Gandhi instead of the concepts that he brought up, implemented, and accomplished with them?

Because really, what does him drinking his own urine have to do with any of that? NOthing. It was just a cheap shot. Juvenile one at that.

[uppityperson]

92. Well stated.

I can very much understand the desire for revenge, and even people acting thusly. However, they now are also murderers. It is a difficult situation, understandable but not right.

[AlienGirl]

121. What makes you think religion was a motivation?

This wasn't about "old-testament revenge" (especially since modern Judaism's ethical/moral code is far more elaborate and nuanced than "an eye for an eye"), it was about stopping some of the worst murderers in the world before they could kill more.

Not everything Jews do is motivated by religion. Not everything Jews do is necessarily even *influenced* by religion, and your condemnation of "old testament monotheism" could be seen as offensive to religious Jews.

Tucker

[Ron Green]

129. Don't call it religion, then... call it a "belief system"

I don't intend to offend anyone who's thoughtful enough to understand why people can't simply take the law into their own hands. The Nazis who were hunted down and killed by the "death squads" were very unlikely to kill more, since the support system for their madness had been dismantled. People like Elie Wiesel went about bringing these monsters to justice through law and education, thereby giving the lie to any who simply became thugs.

The issue of primitive Monotheism is that it allows one to think he has "God on his side" as he commits any sort of act in righteous indignation. A religion that teaches and demands forgiveness doesn't justify murdering one's enemies.

[everythingsxen]

130. You obviously didn't hear what she said...

or what other posters in the thread have said.

At the end of the war, the survivors had no power to just take the Nazi's to court. The Nazi's you say were unlikely to kill again were not simply just "some thugs", we are talking about sadists of the highest order.

As far as "primitive monotheism"... what in the 9 Hells does that have to do with this? The entire point AlienGirl made was that it was not a religion based thing. These were human beings who, after being wronged, revenged themselves upon their tormentors. It had nothing to do with religion, with the possible exception that we are talking about people who were exterminated for their religion.

Here are 3 quotes for you to consider:

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? - Shakespeare

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. - Charlotte Brontë

Live well. It is the greatest revenge. - The Talmud

The first says "We are all equal, and all equally fallible."; vengeance is our nature.

The second says "The urge for revenge is powerful, and sweet. Like a ripe melon that you can taste even before you crack open the rind."; the caveat of course being that, like the child who stuff himself on too much candy, you will regret your revenge, but you cannot stop that impulse. Some very few strong people in our multi-thousand year history have managed to be so enlightened that they could resist their nature. I make no such pretense that I am some kind of great person; if I am wronged, will I not revenge?

The third says "Don't take revenge you schmuck! Go, live happy, forget those bad people."; interestingly, that's from the Talmud, which according to you, is part of that 'primitive monotheism'.

If the survivors were really acting according to their religion, they would have let them live. However I find that everyone who has this argument and is arguing on the pro-Nazi side can never seem to allow the thought to enter their head that the people we are talking about are human beings first and Jews second.

I very often find the prevailing DU attitude is that Jews are somehow different than any other person with a religion, that somehow Judaism pervades all aspects of their life and the only motivation they can have is based on it.

[Ron Green]

131. I have heard what she and the other posters have said, but I don't

agree with them. My view is that revenge, while natural, is a "lower" sort of response, while forgiveness, a higher response, is what we are called upon to practice. That it's a much harder thing to do is borne out by millenia of wars and retributions, all the while counseled against by the wisest souls. Read Socrates in the Crito, where he acknowledges that most people believe it's okay to pay back a wrong with a wrong, while maintaining, until his own unjust death, that the masses are wrong in this view.

The idea that the deposed Nazis were capable of setting up some new method of exterminating more Jews is exceedingly weak. I'd like to hear how this might have happened. And you didn't address my comparison of Elie Wiesel with the "death squad" participants. One method furthers law and society, the other reacts in a tribal way to wrongs.

I separated the idea of religion from the "vengeance" motif, but not the idea of a belief system. As you plan and plot a murder, you have to believe that you are somehow doing something justifiable or right. Does it make a difference whether the intended victim is a Nazi functionary or a member of a rival family down the street?

[everythingsxen]

132. Answers

My view is that, if you are human you will take revenge. It's basically that simple. I rebuke those who say "I would not take revenge", if your people have been the victims of genocide, let me know how you felt about it.

I never said anything about the Nazi's setting up a new extermination program, nor has anyone else.

As far as Elie Wiesel, I don't know him. I know some of his work, I also know he sad nothing and did nothing for 10 years afterward. For all I know, he was one of the ones who went out and killed a bunch of Nazi's; then he turned his life around and changed his viewpoint. From the bios I am reading of him online, I see nothing about him hunting down anyone. As to a comparison.. there is no comparison. It's comparing apples and 9mm ammo.

Most survivors walked out of the Holocaust with no belief system, including Elie Wiesel. They felt that God had abandoned them. They felt like the whole universe was meaningless. You can't systematically torture and murder people for more than a few years and expect them to walk out full of forgiveness.

[Ron Green]

133. "My people" "Your people" "Those people"

Tribalism is a stage of humanity in which we've been mired for many years. My view is that individually and as a species we must work to get beyond this, and seeing all people as connected rather than set against each other is how we do it. George W. Bush is happiest when he talks about "enemies." His handlers know that invoking the Other is the quickest way to get them fearful and angry and get things done.

Once again I would quote Gandhi: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Simple? Yes. Easy? No way; it's the hardest thing we can do, but it's absolutely essential for human salvation, in my opinion.

Your view is that we MUST take revenge because we're human. My view is that we MUST go beyond revenge for that very same reason.

[everythingsxen]

135. That's a very enlightened point of view.

I wonder though if you would actually follow the code of ethics you have mapped out and so rigidly apply to Holocaust survivors if the same events happened to you.

So are you somehow evolved beyond the rest of us humans?

Would you sit passively and accept your fate as Nazi's stormed into your house, raped and murdered your family and beat you until you were unconscious?

Once again I would quote Gandhi: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

and to quote AngryAmish from this very thread:

Ghandi drank his own urine

Which, to be honest is a valid point. Seriously though, it's insane to think that somehow people will all just evolve and be cool with each other.

And I didn't say a person *must* take revenge. I said they will. It's a minor point, but if you follow the quotes I gave in a previous reply and sync it up with that, it all makes perfectly rational sense.

[Ron Green]

136. I honestly don't know what I would do if my family were all killed

by Nazis, or any group. And I'm not rigidly mapping out or applying anything to Holocaust survivors. I do think that tracking people down and killing them months or years after the fact is very different from defending one's own family, so I hope you'll make that difference too.

You say "it's insane to think that somehow people will all just evolve and be cool with each other." I don't agree that it's insane to think this, because I have the hope that over time this will happen. Maybe it will take many lifetimes, maybe millions of years, maybe several worlds.

The only point I have tried to make regarding the topic of this thread is that "death squads," if there were such, acted not from a higher part of their being but from a baser side. I have this baser side as well; I don't claim to be better than they are. I do know that forgiveness is what is called for, and I don't know how I would answer that call if it happened to me. But I know that to premeditate murder, even of the vilest people, requires playing God, and that's across the line for me.

[Raksha]

154. You are right--it wasn't "old-testament revenge."

The Jewish religion had nothing to do with it one way or the other. I believe the Muslim religion makes revenge a moral obligation, but the Jewish religion does not. This was more of a personal thing, and I can't help seeing it as "self-defense after the fact," if that makes any sense.

I posted in more detail about "an eye for an eye" in my last post.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

123. Deleted message

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[everythingsxen]

124. I am posting this way up high.....

So everyone in this thread who is getting nose bleeds from riding their high horse, in the high ground, taking the high road up to their ivory towers can see it.

I am really, really, really glad you have the ability to sit safely at your computers and objectively denounce what these people did. I am also glad that you have the moral clarity and dedication to sit back and say:

"Well, every person that I knew grewing up, my entire family and six million others were all killed, boy I sure am upset, but I forgive the Nazi's... they were just trying to bring order to a crazy world, and it was all just Hitler and his officers, not those nice SS guys who did all the bad stuff. Hey, look at that... looks like the Nuremberg Trial proved me right! Look at that! That really nice SS Lt. Colonel just got released and he's moving into my family's old house and just got hired as an intellegence expert for the American's. Well, what a nice guy. He sure deserves it. Oh well... guess I will go back to the camp they set up for us refugees to sleep and huddle with others for warmth and hope that there is enough food to go around."

Yeah. Right.

I find it interesting that here on DU, there are plenty of people who will talk revenge when it comes to child molesters or other sorts of criminals, but there is always a very active discussion on the topic of Holocaust survivors who killed Nazis after the war. It seems that a Jew who kills the Nazi for raping and murdering his/her people is more unacceptable than a mother/father killing the person who raped and murdered their child.



(Accidently posted under my Life Partners account. :argh: )

[Raksha]

153. "An eye for an eye..."

is almost universally misunderstood by Christians, in an effort to demonstate the alleged superiority of Christianity over Judaism. It is NOT any kind of moral or spiritual justification for revenge. On the contrary, it's an early attempt to LIMIT acts of revenge at a time when taking out someone's eye became an excuse to wipe out the offender's entire family! The blood feuds of ancient times tended to get out of hand very easily, and they could go on for generations like the Montagues and the Capulets. As you said, it was very much like the Middle East or the 'hood is right now.

"An eye for an eye" actually referred to liability and monetary damages anyway, and was the equivalent to our system of punitive damages. As far as I know, it has never been interpreted in Jewish law as literal permission to take out anyone's eye!

The concentration camp survivors who hunted down and killed their tormentors were not acting in a way that is either sanctioned or condemned in Jewish law, at least as far as I know. They were merely behaving in a very human and understandable way at a time when the normal avenues of justice were not available to them.

[NNN0LHI]

22. Iraqis are going to do the same to their tormentors before its all over

Guess who that would be?

But we will call them terrorists.

Don

[xultar]

23. That is what I'm sayin. So if the Iraqi people form some death squads

and take out some of our troops then that would be murder.

So it goes, if you agree with what the Jews did then we need to agree with the anyone who executes without trial.

[Maru Kitteh]

116. In war and genocide there are no trials

I have dear, decades long friends who may have yet to return to Iraq, a husband and wife I have known for 23 and 16 years respectively. They hold no animosity for the Iraqi born who kill occupation forces.

[AgadorSparticus]

141. excellent point.

[xultar]

24. What if they killed some people and they accidentally killd the wrong one

or killed some by stander by mistake.

Is that o.k.?

[cantstandbush]

27. What if we accidentlally killed the wrong people during our sweeps

in Iraq and our indiscriminate bombings? WTF are you asking is o.k?

[xultar]

95. You don't get what I'm saying. I don't think executions in any case

are justified. There are people in this thread that think it is justified that they went executing people.

I don't agree with their stance.

[Maru Kitteh]

120. Talk to me about that after your cousin is murdered

by having her body slit from her privates to her chin. She called them a pig. Her murderers walk away with a chuckle while some grunt cleans your cousins blood off his sword. The grunt looks at you and snickers because you are a helpless animal to him. The fucker actually LICKS the sword.

This is my aunts story. This was her experience.

FUCK THE NAZIS.

[xultar]

126. But what if the Israeli executioners killed some innocents by accident?

[tishaLA]

143. What do Israelis have to do with this?

[xultar]

144. This thread is about Israeli's forming execution squads to kill Nazis

right?...Holocost survivors right?

[tishaLA]

145. No it's about Holocaust survivors

who appeared on an Israeli program; it doesn't say they are Israelis. Not all Jewish Holocaust survivors are. Ask my grandmother.

[xultar]

146. OK Holocaust survivors. What if they accidentally killed innocents during

their executions of Nazis. That is what I was talking about.

[tishaLA]

150. The point is, it's wrong to conflate

"Israelis" and "Jews" in such a facile way and without any kind of rationale. But I frequently see it here on DU for some reason. In fact, almost every time a topic dealing with Jews comes up, I read endlessly about Israel, as if every Jew were responsible for or approved of everything Israel does. It's almost an unconscious thing, I guess.

[Lefty48197]

28. Sweet.

The only good nazi is a dead nazi.

[CoffeeCat]

29. I applaud these Holocaust survivors...

In my opinion, they were acting in self defense.

The horrors they experienced were traumatic beyond belief. The world stood by
as this animalistic persecution, confinement, torture and murder happened.

No one did anything for years.

How were the Jews to know that the SS wouldn't rise up again and gain power? How
were the Jews to know that the world wouldn't abandon them again?

These people were exterminating evil. They were protecting themselves, their children,
their neighbors and their heritage--from these sickening vermin from ever rising up
again.

Anyone who doesn't understand those feelings--is not thinking.

I can understand disagreeing philosophically with "an eye for an eye." However, to criticize a Holocaust survivor for killing an SS member who oversaw death camps--is to lack empathy and
understanding.

[FreedomAngel82]

34. It's just murder

Sure, you can see why they'd do it, but it's still murder. They weren't being threatned or anything like that. They were just going after people and slaying them.

[AgadorSparticus]

37. You may understand why they would WANT to do it, but you don't

JUSTIFY doing it. And they were not acting in self defense. This was after the fact. It is nothing but pure revenge.

You ask a lot of what-if questions that really, go back to the very thing Ron Green stated in his post: a peaceful resolution from within that comes from forgiveness and healing--not from anger and murder. As long as you sit and justify the anger, hatred, and murder, you never transcend the experience. And if you don't transcend the experience, you forever live in fear and anger which translates to more pain and suffering.

It's funny how so many people think that revenge is the resolution to the hurt, pain, and suffering one has endured in life. It NEVER is. It is a hollow substitute. Much like taking drugs to ease the emotional pain and trauma.

[CoffeeCat]

38. I agree with you...

...but sometimes---you just can't get over it.

No matter how much you want to. No matter how much you try.

People who are traumatized have indelible emotional scars. Their minds cannot allow them to forgive because the wounds never truly heal.

Ever heard of PTSD? PTSD keeps a person in a suspended emotional state that delays healing. Some human beings react to extreme trauma by shutting down and suspending their humanity and their emotions. When the trauma ends, they end up constantly re-living the trauma. It's like a record stuck in a groove.

You want to move on. You can't. Your mind won't let you. It's the price you pay for suspending reality--to deal with extreme pain.

I bet many Holocaust survivors had chronic PTSD. I maintain that they were defending themselves, when they killed these perps. If you had experienced repeated and insane horrors for months--sometimes years--and then saw the perps who committed the crimes--you might try to protect yourself, too. You might murder the culprits, in order to prevent future trauma.

Also, I don't believe that forgiveness is the ultimate goal for everyone. How do you forgive someone who isn't asking for forgiveness, and does not care that they hurt you?

How do you forgive someone who does not admit to wrongdoing?

[AgadorSparticus]

39. trust me, I know about PTSD. There are many people who come

from war ravaged places and have seen the most horrific violence to their family and entire communities. There are people today who came from active genocide. I don't agree that trauma leaves indelible scars that we cannot overcome. Scars are not necessarily bad. They can be reminders of our human spirit, of our amazing ability to survive beyond our expectations. The tibetans have a saying, "in crisis, there is opportunity".

It may take some people more work than others, but everyone has the ability to heal and transcend their pain and suffering. That is why there is much needed psychological, emotional, and spiritual work after a traumatic experience.

Whether it is aversion, ignorance, or attachments, they all lead to pain and suffering. We can't suppress our trauma nor can we be attached to it. Attachment to the anger and hatred is what binds us to our pain & suffering and keeps us from healing. It will forever feel like, as you say, a record stuck in a groove. These are 3 of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.

"How do you forgive someone who does not admit to wrongdoing?"

By recognizing that forgiveness is not for the other person. It is for ourselves.

Forgiveness is not done on the basis of expecting something from the people who have wronged us. In "forgiveness" there is giving. And giving should not come with conditions. Too often we are too fixated on conditions and controlling external outcomes (other's reactions, other's emotions, other's perspectives, other's punishment, other's redemption-- instead of just focusing on our own internal outcomes (healing, awareness, understanding, acceptance, letting go).

And at the core, people with control issues are working out of fear. They are afraid they won't get the outcome they want or expect--which makes them even more attached to an idea (murder, revenge, etc.). But fear is never real. It is the opposite of understanding and healing.

In understanding ourselves, we can learn to understand others and let go. It is still not easy. People spend lifetimes learning to let go. But there is never a better time than now to start.

[AlienGirl]

42. Spoken like someone who does not, themself, have PTSD

Brains and minds and spirits can be broken beyond repair, and not "everybody" has the ability to heal from traumatic stress, at least not within the span of a lifetime.

Tucker

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

48. Maybe true, but it doesn't mean acts commited in this condition are right.

Forgivable, maybe, but not right.

[Ron Green]

64. Even a broken mind or spirit, a bad case of PTSD, cannot justify

premeditated murder, which is what these "death squads" are alleged to have done. AgadorSparticus is absolutely on the mark, in my opinion, in that forgiveness, of ourselves and others, is not only the best thing we can do in this life, it is the very purpose of our life here on earth. Forgiveness is greater than any "disorder" or any wrong that can be committed. And the overwhelming importance of the message of Christ is just that. It's too bad that we have fundamentalist religions going at each other today as in the past, because these belief systems see "enemies" and "justice" as more important than Christ's "peace that passes all understanding."

[The Magistrate]

79. The 'Message Of Christ', Sir

Carries little weight with those who do not believe on that fellow.

The imperatives of revenge are ancient to a degree sufficient to lead to suspicion they have a biological basis. What these men did was a natural and proper human action. As an in many matters after the fact abstract moralizing is of neither benefit nor consequence.

"I couldn't trust a man who wouldn't steal a little...."

[Ron Green]

81. Natural, yes ... proper - not so sure about that one.

Of course it's in our nature to take revenge (the main problem is determining where to stop), but I suggest that the concept of transformative forgiveness is an evolutionary step toward a better human race. This is why ol' Jesus' message has resonated so strongly and remained vital throughout history, despite the stupefying amount of harm that's been done in his name. As another in this thread pointed out, revenge is easy (and satisfying - look at the popularity of "payback" movies), but forgiveness is hard, hard work. And yet forgiveness is the act that changes us as individuals and changes the world we live in.

In the Elizabethan world view, humans existed on the hierarchy between the beasts and the angels, containing some of the nature of both. Perhaps through the act of forgiveness we can move somewhat along that path away from our biology and toward our humanity.

[The Magistrate]

84. My Experience Of Forgiveness, Sir, Is Extremely Limited

But one of the conditions for its successful employment seems to be repentance and regret and a resolve to abjure the behavior in future; absent these items, all that is done is lisencing or even enabling the wrongdoer.

Asked whether evil should be repaid with good, the Master said: "With what, then, would I repay good? Repay good with good; repay evil with correction."

[AgadorSparticus]

100. and what is "correction"? Is it the eye for an eye belief? or is does it

mean to repay an evil with a corrective action that is nonviolent, compassionate, and christ-like?

"all that is done is lisencing or even enabling the wrongdoer"

At what point do we then distinguish the difference between taking the high road and enabling? If we go after everyone that "wrongs" us, when do we have time to turn the other cheek?

[The Magistrate]

103. The Emphasis On 'Christ-Like', Sir, Amuses Me

It never crosses my mind in considering what is or is not proper action. While some consider violence and compassion mutually exclusive, that is a false and superficial belief. Correction is what is required end the wrong....

Once the Sage wrote: "Weapons are instruments of fear. They are not a wise man's tools. He uses them only when he has no choice."

[AgadorSparticus]

106. your assumption there is an emphasis on christ-like is interesting.

It was just a description. You mention master and I mention christ-like.

"While some consider violence and compassion mutually exclusive, that is a false and superficial belief. Correction is what is required end the wrong...."

Again, that is your opinion. For the record, the whole concept of forgiveness was brought up not to elicit change or redemption from the wrongdoer. It is a tool for the victim.

But, again the word "correction". Incarcerate them for life. But the death penalty assumes many things I do not subscribe to.

The notion that compassion is superficial is amusing. Judgement rules the world we live in and look at the state it is in.

But I want to clarify that I never stated that anyone who were involved with the Nazis do not have blood on their hands or that they should go without "correction". But I don't agree that death squads and capital punishment are justified in the correctional process--atleast in a civilized society.

[The Magistrate]

108. The Statement, Sir

Was that the belief violence and compassion are mutually exclusive was superficial.

The idea that forgiveness is no more than a tool for the victim has an odd ring to it; vengeance is similarly a tool for the victim, and it would seem then there is little more than a difference in personal taste on which to choose between the things, on that ground. But the problem of evil is not the victim of it, but rather the perpetrator of it, and the challenge to find a means of addressing it that does not leave it to stand and continue. Whether the victim feels good or no is somewhat beside that point, and whether the perpetrator will continue as before is very much the point.

[AgadorSparticus]

111. Yes. That is the statement. I don't believe that compassion is ever

superficial. But perhaps I do not understand the intention of your statement.

"The idea that forgiveness is no more than a tool for the victim has an odd ring to it"

I refer you to my conversation with Ron Green. Posts #20 and #39. Forgiveness and compassion are brought up as healing tools for the victim. It gives the victims an option besides vengeance. While you may find it ok to belittle it as nothing more than just "feeling good", I think they are important concepts to survival. They have saved many lives and have done far more in building, saving, and producing positive effects than anything in the name of vengeance or "justice".

And I don't believe vengeance is a tool. It is an excuse. Are we saying that as victims, we have carte blanche in choosing any emotion we want and carry with it moral weight? And I use the word "moral" loosely as it then becomes "whose" morals. But the very concept of wanting to elicit a change in the perpetrator carries with it some moral semblance.

As for changing a set of behaviors from the perpetrator, I still stand that vigilante groups and capital punishment are not the way to resolution. If the point is to stop the perpetrator from continuing said behavior, then capital punishment will stop the perpetrator, but not the behavior. It is not effective in curbing behaviors.

If killing all the Nazi guards were a solution to curbing the behavior, then why is there a growing Neo-Nazis problem in both Europe and here? It is late and I will find links for you tommorrow. But I know this from first hand experience when I was in Austria. I was told of the problem from the people there.

[The Magistrate]

112. We Are Not Going To Change One Another's Views, Sir

A pleasure to have crossed words with you.

"I've got nothing to say and I'm only going to say it once."

[AgadorSparticus]

117. It's been fun! Have a good night!

:hi:

[Raksha]

104. Just for the record: Jews do not believe in turning the other cheek.

And even with all my many years of involvement in New Age thinking, I don't even give lip service to that as an ideal, because it ISN'T! It's allowing yourself to be a victim. Which is not to say I believe in an "eye for eye," necessarily. It's possible to forgo revenge...or not, depending on the individual and the circumstances. But turning the other cheek? NOTHING--absolutely NOTHING--incenses me more than when a Christian even suggests that to a Jew, especially if said Jew happens to be me!

[AgadorSparticus]

109. First of all, I'm not a Christian. But, hey, if turning the other cheek

offends you, then don't do it. I'm not out to change anyone. But I am entitled to my opinions and I will speak them here on a DISCUSSION board.

I never thought of Forgiveness as a New Age concept but a universal concept.

Forgiveness is not necessarily just a step, but a PROCESS. However, you assume that forgiveness means you gloss over the situation. That is not forgiveness. That is aversion.

[Raksha]

107. Sometimes forgiveness is not possible.

Forget about me forgiving the Nazis--EVER! It will be a VERY long time before I forgive the Christian religion for its centuries of institutionalized anti-Semitism that made the Holocaust possible. Yeah, I know all about the historical reasons for it. I also know that it wasn't until after the Holocaust (at Vatican II) that the Church FINALLY decided to "absolve" the Jews for their alleged role in the crucifixion. When I say "it will be a long time..." I mean, ask me about it in the next fucking century at the very earliest, or more likely, ask me about it in the next fucking millennium, and I MIGHT be willing to consider it! Then again, I might not be.

[AgadorSparticus]

122. If you are not WILLING, then you are right. It isn't POSSIBLE.

Forgiveness isn't justifying an evil. It is about recognizing ignorance and rising above it. Otherwise, you just continue to let them have, in some degree, power over you. And they are not worthy of it.

[AlienGirl]

125. The process of forgiveness and getting beyond trauma

If someone has wronged you, and truly regrets it, and has made effort to reconcile and make things right, *then* forgiveness and moving-forward-together are possible. But it is the choice of the one who was wronged whether to forgive, or not. There is no moral imperative to forgive, regardless whether it's psychologically healthier or not.

In this case, though, these Nazis had not expressed regret, had not tried to fix anything, and had not sought the opportunity to be forgiven. Therefore, there was nothing there to put forgiveness *into*. To try to forgive them would be like trying to fill an upside-down cup.

Incidentally, there are groups that work to reconcile Holocaust survivors and children of survivors with truly repentant ex-Nazis and the children of ex-Nazis. But there is a lot of internal work that people need to do, both psychologically and interpersonally within their peer group, before they can benefit from efforts like that.

Tucker

[AgadorSparticus]

140. I never said it was morally imperative to forgive. I am asserting that

it is psychologically healthier to accept, forgive and move on.

I do not subscribe to the notion that one can ONLY forgive when the offender has offered regret. Like you said, some nazis will NEVER have awareness of their inherent evil. So, the victims will just have to live with the anger and hatred for the rest of their lives? Or do you believe that it goes away with the death of the perpetrators? Because if it does go away with the death of the perpetrators, then why do some people still suffer from PTSD after their captors/tormentors/enemies have been killed off--as seen from war? And what do you suggest as a healing modality for victims when their perpetrators are not known to be even dead or alive?

Again, I'm not out to elicit a changed behavior in the offender. I'm only concerned with the victims and giving them tools to move beyond hate and anger.

[Raksha]

151. Hey, if you want to put it that way it's perfectly okay with me.

It's not possible for me to forgive--not only the Nazis but their predecessors too, namely the zealots of the Inquisiton and the Crusades and the pogroms in Ukraine which were the reason my grandparents emigrated to the US--because I am UNWILLING to!

I'm fine with that. I don't see one damn good reason in hell why I SHOULD be willing to forgive them either. I don't see why it's giving them "power over me" to continue to hate them, and I WILL hate the oppressors of the Jews as much as I want, as intensely as I want, AND FOR AS LONG AS I WANT!!! I have NO intention of cutting it short because my hatred intrudes on somebody else's comfort zone--in fact, in a grim sort of way I find it satisfying to make anyone squirm who identifies with the oppressors, makes excuses for them, or even tells me I shouldn't hate them.

Then again, it's also a deeply rooted defense mechanism, not defense of ego but a matter of sheer self-preservation. I don't mean to be condescending when I say this, but I really think you have to be Jewish to understand it.

[AgadorSparticus]

67. no, I haven't. but my family members have gone through war

so I have seen and lived with it first hand. It is a PROCESS and no, healing is not guaranteed in a single lifespan. NOTHING is guaranteed in life. You make the best of it but you still don't justify living with anger and hatred and say that it is OK.

But I disagree with your premise that brains, minds, and spirits can be broken beyond repair. It is a matter of getting the right help.

[newswolf56]

82. Thanks; obviously you know of what you speak:

One of the Holocaust survivors I know is a woman approximately my own age who was for a time my lover, and in our quietly stormy three-year off-and-on relationship (though we never spoke of it), I began to understand something of what PTSD looks like from the outside. I suffered from one of the milder and less-debilitating forms of PTSD for years, and one of our common denominators was that -- having viewed evil (and realized it is an inseparable part of human nature), we each possessed an instinctive and ultimately incurable distrust of all humans including each other.

(My PTSD was of classically American origin: initially the product of near-fatal parental brutality and abandonment, it was substantially amelioriated by years of therapy. But then it was resurrected and many times intensified by the shock of a house fire that, by wiping out all the artifacts of my years as a journalist -- manuscripts, photographs, files, tear sheets, awards, commendations etc. -- totally robbed me of all identity. The loss of my manuscripts, one of which was the photographically self-illustrated product of a 24-year research effort, was devastating beyond words, and the whole disaster flung me into a depression that literally destroyed my life beyond hope of recovery or repair: This the reason that, at age 65, my pension is so tiny I am forced to freelance for the only employer I can find: a publication so indifferent to my wellbeing its executives do not even care enough to get my November paycheck to me by Christmas.)

[Batgirl]

87. sorry for your loss, especially the fire and losing your manuscripts.

I'm against the death penalty. I couldn't shoot an animal unless I was starving. But I don't find myself feeling disturbed in the least at the idea of vigilante justice for the nazis who ran the death camps. Especially when there was no avenue for the non-vigilante kind to occur.

[newswolf56]

94. I am very fortunate in that I knew several people from Eastern Europe...

whose experiences made the reality of World War II vividly clear -- that while there is no doubting the American contribution to victory, the Eastern Europeans (and especially the Russians) are the people who truly won the war: they bore a burden we cannot imagine -- the destruction of the London Blitz spread across an entire continent -- and paid so dearly the human loss remains inconceivable: the best estimates approach 50 million deaths.

One of the survivors, my former lover, was rescued by the Red Army from the ruins of the Polish city in which she and her fellow Jews had been hiding. Eleven years old in 1944, she was adopted as a kind of mascot by an all-woman Red Army tank battalion and later experienced the infinite satisfaction of riding a T-34 into the liberation of Berlin: seeing the once-arrogant Nazis cringe in abject fear. So quick and unforgiving was Soviet justice that anyone associated with the Nazi Party was rounded up and shot.

Another of the Jewish survivors of Hitler, my first boss (now long dead), fought the Nazis as a partizan in the Baltic forests; later his partisan band was incorporated into the Red Army and he himself commissioned a major.

Both were prompted to escape Eastern Europe after the war largely because of fears of the Stalinist revival of anti-Semitism; both eventually found their way (through a succession of DP camps) to the U.S., which then (despite Joe McCarthy) was still nevertheless the one place on earth that said as a mater of policy, "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

How ironic the venomous specter of Jew-hatred now again raises its serpentine head in the very land to which these people sought haven from its venom.

That said, thank you for your good wishes.

[AgadorSparticus]

98. I'm sorry about your manuscript. You've gone through so much already.

I hope things look better or alteast get easier for you. But you survived that debilitating depression and that in itself is amazing.

[Maru Kitteh]

118. What the fuck?

""How do you forgive someone who does not admit to wrongdoing?"

By recognizing that forgiveness is not for the other person. It is for ourselves."

Wow.


Just WOW.

That was the most lame, asinine, new-age gobbldy-gook indescribably inappropriate bullshit I've yet seen here. AND I'M A FLAMING LIBERAL.

The what? 20+ million family members of the 6 million Jewish People slaughtered should forgive....... cause you think it's good for them.

:wow:

[AgadorSparticus]

137. is that all you do is bash? or do you ever engage in discussion?

I guess it's easier to just bash and call people names without even TRYING to understand what the other person is trying to say. But that's besides the point. Discussion is never really the intention, is it?

Like I said to someone, if the whole anger and hatred is working for ya, stick with it.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

50. Those were MUCH different times where namby-pamby, touchy-..........

...feely, I'm okay/you're okay psychobabble took a total back-seat to bringing war criminals to justice by ANY means possible.

[newswolf56]

69. Thank you for having the courage to say that here on DU.

[AgadorSparticus]

71. Yosemite Sam, is that you???

hell yeah, those were the times when people didn't take shit from anyone and took justice into their hands because they are such "MEN" and had big cajones and of course, by ANY MEANS POSSIBLE. <grunt, grunt> Look. Me. Big. Man. :sarcasm:

This simple minded bravado is very similar to *'s "lets smoke em out of their holes" and "bin laden wanted: dead or alive".

this isn't psychobabble. but go ahead and label it that if it makes you feel better about your vengeance and need for blood disguised as "justice".

there's a time and place for guns. after the fact isn't one of them. when you're ready to put the gun down, lets talk.

[Name removed]

74. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ron Green]

83. I'd want to know more about your definition of "human courage."

The courage to forgive seems to me much greater than the courage to hunt down and kill bad people outside the legal process.

[AgadorSparticus]

96. And you miss my point entirely. I responded to one person's tone

with the same to point out how counter productive it is and you jump in and make false assumptions with vitriolic name calling.

You MISTAKE my caricature of misplaced courage for the jewish victims of the holocaust or any other victims through history when it was directed solely at one person and his empty, ignorant and offensive bravado. And it's not surprising that you come off the same way. Screw discussion, right?

Whatever. You win for best name calling. Better now?

[Lexingtonian]

91. that, sadly, is the usual excuse

for barbarity. We Were The Elect, The Rules Were Suspended, 'Justice' was killing people without letting them fairly answer our accusations.

Except that morality is never truly suspended. 'Any means possible' always means: crime.
And justice without mercy is never justice, it's just animal brutality.
And, most importantly, no one is ever entitled to play God.

Call what these people did revenge. Don't insult us by calling it justice.

It was the actions of people who are weak and without true confidence, not actions of the integer and strong. Perhaps excusable, but it's obscene to term it good.

[The Magistrate]

114. In Other Words, Sir

You do not approve.

Weak people did not survive what these lived through. The distinction between justice and vengeance you attempt to draw seems largely a matter of spelling, and whether someone with a gavel was involved or not: the two concepts are not so divergent as you seem to think. The idea that to kill a person is to "play God" strikes me as most odd: do you consider all death of humans or animals or plants an intentional act by some diety?

[Lexingtonian]

128. Go ahead

Do explain this equivalence of justice and vengeance to me. Funny how we bother with an expensive and elaborate system of courts and laws and procedures and presumption of innocence...you simply are saying it's all superfluous luxury because, hey, not enough of us own guns and resolve our private problems on our own, I suppose. If justice and vengeance are essentially the same thing, isn't any retributive murder justified? If the kids of the couple of Nazi officers these people killed hunt down and kills each of them, in your system their actions are justifiable- and there is no rationale by which to end the cycle of mutual killing until one side is wiped out.

Yeah, I look at walking, starved, near-death, PTSD-filled people who have only survived because they could persist in some denial or suppressed the rage and I think "Oh, wow, what strength! Let's trust these people with the most important moral job out there and expect wise judgment from them." There's a fundamental distinction between strength (which is needed to endure) and capability/power (of meaningful/proper action in the world)- Hannah Arendt made it between the German terms of Kraft and Macht in her writings about European Jewish Diaspora life and thinking. She said the definition of Jewish ghetto life is/was a fullness of the first and painful absence or incompetence, prior to maturing into full emancipation, in the Gentile world in the latter.

I simply don't think well of people who think these retributive murders are virtuous. I think the proper stance is to have pity on them and their misfortunes and regret the grotesque situations forced upon them, and to be thankful that the children of their victims chose not to pursue retribution. Millions of European Jews did not see reason or excuse to engage in murder when the war ended, saw voluntarily doing so as giving Hitler the posthumous victory of degrading themselves to that animal level which Naziism pretended to be the heights of human life and apostasy from the Covenant of Sinai- whose essential idea, if I understand it correctly, is to see in each human primarily a spiritual being (how ever degraded or fallen).

No, I'm not even a theist. But it's a bad habit of people to fight and kill each other over accusations of worshiping the wrong idol. They always act in the name of their idol/deity in so doing.

[The Magistrate]

134. Vengeance, Sir, Is The Origin Of Law

The original codes simply regularized the matter, stating equivalencies, and opening the prospect of resolving matters through money payment rather than blood. In the more modern codes, the root claim is that the offense is actually against the governing authority, and not the object of the crime itself, on the grounds that the crime has broken the state's monopoly on violence, and offended against the gaurantee of peace the state extends to its citizens: something more akin to, say, a trade union proceeding against an unlisenced craftsman, or the enforcement of an exclusive marketing franchise, than anything else. The method, however, remains the same; the person who committed the offense is subject to some distressing punishment held sufficiently unpleasant to balance the scales against the act that has been committed. The agency is simply the state's organs, rather than the family and friends of the person harmed. That does not strike me as a very important difference in kind. That there is no rationale for ending a feud till one side or the other ceases to exist is obvious, and has no bearing on whether or not the process is correctly described.

Your reading of the circumstances and mental process before, during, and after the Nazi period does not strike me as well founded. To me the idea that humans are something other than animals has a very odd ring, for we certainly are animals, and a great proportion of our difficulties in society and life come from a disinclination to recognize that simple fact. The only points worth engaging are the claim that maturation for Jews requires assimilation into the Gentile world, and the claim Jews must be held to a higher standard than other people in worldly action. Both, whatever authoritative name you may wish to cite, strike me as pernicious and false. We are all but clever monkeys, though generally not quite so clever as we like to think.

Your final point is an odd one, as it was you yourself who described the acts in question as "playing God." There is no reason to suppose these people claimed what they did was a religious duty, or that their acts stemmed from outrage that the people they killed worshiped a different diety. The point remains that if a killing is described as "playing God", there is necessarily raised by that the claim that all death is the deliberate action of a diety, for there is no other sense possible on which to rest the claim. If you do not hold that belief, than there is no reason discernable to make that statement, except perhaps a feeling that it has a nice ring about it, that might serve to sway by emotion....

[Lexingtonian]

152. nicely ahistorical

The original codes simply regularized the matter, stating equivalencies, and opening the prospect of resolving matters through money payment rather than blood.

That may be empirically true, but it evades the context- the reasoning, the values, the ritual involved and assumed society preserved by it that was generally as important as the payment itself.

In the more modern codes, the root claim is that the offense is actually against the governing authority, and not the object of the crime itself, on the grounds that the crime has broken the state's monopoly on violence, and offended against the guarantee of peace the state extends to its citizens:

No, that's not it. Society/authority is not formally an absolute, it serves a codified purpose to which violence and individual behavior is subordinated. The U.S. Constitution defines the purpose it serves glibly and imprecisely in the phrase "In order to create a more perfect union". In the Declaration of Independence the purpose served by the new form of governance is given more simply as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". In Judaism the desire is most clearly articulated in the ideal of the People Israel becoming a 'people of priests' (though the Hebrew phrase has more complicated semantic overtones).

Your reading of the circumstances and mental process before, during, and after the Nazi period does not strike me as well founded. To me the idea that humans are something other than animals has a very odd ring, for we certainly are animals, and a great proportion of our difficulties in society and life come from a disinclination to recognize that simple fact.

I have/had friends and relatives on both sides of the barbed electrified wire and various other lines in Germany then. Very unusually, almost everyone survived. Even the half-Jewish man my great aunt married who as a major in part commanded an SS tank division in the Ukraine. But it was a lot of close calls and remarkable dumb luck. Then again, every one of them seems to have lost an unusual lot of friends and parents and siblings to the First World War and the influenza and tuberculosis epidemics following that.

My older relatives and friends, who cover most of the spectrum of things German and German Jewish then, pretty much vouch for everything Arendt says in the 'Origins of Totalitarianism' being true to the reality and (though denied in many cases) the views of the people who lived then.

The only points worth engaging are the claim that maturation for Jews requires assimilation into the Gentile world, and the claim Jews must be held to a higher standard than other people in worldly action. Both, whatever authoritative name you may wish to cite, strike me as pernicious and false.

Nice pulverizing of strawmen, that. I categorically deny your ridiculous misrepresentation of what I wrote.

We are all but clever monkeys, though generally not quite so clever as we like to think.

As a molecular biologist I can agree with you on a material-empirical level. But it's merely true in the way certain kinds of Right wing ideology are true- even their highest idealisms are merely materialisms with a facade of concepts/ideas/dogmas that fold back into materialism. And pure materialism folds back into matter existing by its own right, which has no human meaning, it mere Is physically and Is dead psychologically to us. Attempting excessively to draw meaning from things that are dead in turn leads people into occultisms.

I deal with scientism every day, which is essentially materialism with some subtle occultism propped in to supply the lacking human meaning. It's the most dreary and bankrupt intellectual aspect of life in the sciences; it survives and revives constantly because it is also what sells scientific research in the marketplace- promising people magical powers in the long run. The infliction and fending off of Death is always a good seller.

Your final point is an odd one, as it was you yourself who described the acts in question as "playing God." There is no reason to suppose these people claimed what they did was a religious duty, or that their acts stemmed from outrage that the people they killed worshiped a different diety.

They took sanction/entitlement to kill from somewhere- largely from the dead, who somehow have authority over the living. Explain to me how they attained certainty that they had this without invoking religious concepts of some kind.

The point remains that if a killing is described as "playing God", there is necessarily raised by that the claim that all death is the deliberate action of a diety, for there is no other sense possible on which to rest the claim. If you do not hold that belief, than there is no reason discernable to make that statement, except perhaps a feeling that it has a nice ring about it, that might serve to sway by emotion....

The point you're feeling your way toward is the origin and appropriate control of human authority to kill another. I'll suggest two choices- either the social contract of the society, or the Covenant with a God or Gods that is the Higher Law. As I see it, the first is merely a simplified allusion to the latter. Levi-Strauss developed Anthropology in the 1880s primarily to test what defines a nation or tribe or group, and he concluded that a shared relationship with a commonly understood divinity or ultimate Being is the universal component group selfdefinition. All the other stuff- race, gender, disabilities, defects, mental aberrance, economic role, habits, most rules, sexual practices, marriage, foods, etc.- tends, on close inspection/careful cultural study of all actual human groups, to illustrate this rather than refute it.

You might be able to deduce what classical Anthropology's conclusion is about what among human beings defines a person as member of human society universally, or- in its absence- truly outside it.

Which, interestingly enough, takes us back to the Holocaust, which is a vein of ore people mine incessantly for an alternative, easier and more selfserving, set of answers. An ore with far more Fool's Gold than gold.

[Raksha]

155. So what?

Re >>As long as you sit and justify the anger, hatred, and murder, you never transcend the experience.<<

Maybe I don't have to transcend it. Maybe I don't want to.

Re >>And if you don't transcend the experience, you forever live in fear and anger which translates to more pain and suffering.<<

WHY??? It means no such thing. It means you refuse to be a victim EVER AGAIN!!!

[MrSlayer]

31. Well you can hardly fault them for it.

I'm quite sure I'd do the same thing if I were in their position.

[Endangered Specie]

40. ...and this is a bad thing?

:shrug: I hope they got as many as possible.

[Occulus]

41. It's a very human response.

Some people don't like that..... for some strange reason.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

45. Chasing and killing fugitives at large I can understand.

Especially if they have already been convicted in absentia, or if the hunter personally witnessed atrocities commited by the target.

But they also planned to mass poison hundreds of SS soldiers who WERE ALREADY IMPRISONED AT AN AMERICAN FACILITY.

With that, my sympathy for them ran out.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

47. Unless you had relatives in the Nazi death camps and had seen.....

...relatives go to the gas chambers, or relatives executed by the travelling death squads, I doubt if you would really understand the depth of hatred the Jews had for the SS personnel who ran or guarded the death camps.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

49. I said it elsewhere and I'll say it here:

Forgivable? Maybe. Right? No way in hell.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

53. Different times, different solutions. I take it by your response that....

...you never had any relatives that disappeared in the Nazi death camp system, or saw people brutally killed by the death squads.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

55. I had that little thing called moral education.

I don't need to witness a murder to distinguish right from wrong.

By the way, why didn't ALL Holocaust survivors form death squads? Why just these few ones?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

46. I don't have a problem with that at all. You reap what you sow.

[Cocoa]

51. I'm against death squads

[Taxloss]

52. I'm amazed it wasn't more common.

Of course, this sort of activity came close to official sanction at points. The Marshall Plan and the Nuremberg Trials weren't inevitable. They are inspiring examples of the triumph of civilisation and the rule of sanity and law over barbarism.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

54. It probably was...but most countries won't admit to such activities.

[Taxloss]

58. Yes.

I won't condone that sort of thing. But I understand it perfectly.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

59. As I said elsewhere, it's something you can forgive.

But keep in mind that forgiveness is for wrong acts.

[Taxloss]

62. Absolutely.

And murderous campaigns of that sort ... well, the reason we fought the Nazis was because we weren't like them, not to become more like them.

[Dorian Gray]

60. I can't say that I'm too up in arms about this....

As they were rounded up like cattle to perform slave labor and die. I don't think violence is ever the solution, but I can understand where the impulse comes from.

[ShaneGR]

65. If someone killed 5-7 million Americans....

I'd be all for forming death squads to hunt them down and kill them. Screw trials, what the Nazi's did goes beyond comprehension.

[troubleinwinter]

66. Another article about it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122301306.html

[txaslftist]

73. Good for them. n/t

[Flagg]

75. Some palestinians use the same logic

Ironically enough...

[ieoeja]

80. That is understandable.

What with all those death camps on the West Bank working 24x7.

:sarcasm:

[Freddie Stubbs]

76. "Killed them execution-style?"

They should have killed them gangland style.

[noonwitch]

78. It's kind of hard to judge them so many years later for it

It's hard to imagine having your friends and family sent to death camps to be slaughtered. It's hard to imagine the feelings one would have afterwards about those who did the slaughtering. They felt they had to do it, perhaps, to protect their fellow jews in the future.

[Generator]

85. Jews killing Nazis

what a nice twist. Makes my day.

[warrens]

86. This troubles me not at all

I vas chust doink mein chob just doesn't cut it in genocide.

[lynne]

97. I've always wondered why -

they didn't band together to kill the Nazi's much earlier. They could have saved millions of lives had they done so.

[AlienGirl]

105. Hope

There was always the hope that maybe things were not going to get any worse, maybe if everyone co-operated and tried to stay out of trouble the Nazis wouldn't be so brutal. Revolts only happened when people had given up hope in human nature.

(Okay, it's more complex than that. There was also hunger and fear and responsibility for kids and a bunch of other things. But in the end, it all kind of boils down to hope for the future.)

Tucker

[DaveinMD]

99. good

I've got no problem with that.

[Catherine Vincent]

101. I hope they don't feel ashamed for that.

I think something like that would be forgiven. Not shocking at all.

[bluestateguy]

110. I support revenge

I am distantly related to a few who perished in the Holocaust.

I support these revenge killings.

If that upsets the "Hug a Thug" wing of DU :grr:Tough SHIT:grr:

[Maru Kitteh]

113. FUCKEM I would gladly kill them - and I don't even back the death penalty

I don't believe in any state having power to kill it's citezens BUT - that doesn't mean some do not deserve to die.

I would kill them. No problem.

[LittleClarkie]

115. Hopefully they get one of the points of Spielberg's movie

That violence begets violence, and doesn't solve much.

[noiretextatique]

149. how many of you have any idea of what these people experienced?

the barbarity of the holocaust, the massacre of indigenious people, slavery, etc. how many here have any experience of that in the bloodlines?
newflash: oppressed people do not love their oppressors. i can't blame these people, and while i can't condone what they did, i most certainly understand it, nor do i feel any of YOU are in a position to judge them, considering what this country was like during the time when they were suffering at the hands of the nazis. i can;t find a nice way to put this, so i will state it plainly: i doubt the majority of americans of that time really opposed what the nazis were doing.

forgiveness...sure it's something you do for yourself, but not all have the luxury of such enlightenment.

[jpgray]

156. For those who say revenge is biological and natural, so is forgiveness

So is non-violence, so is refusing to set oneself up as a suitable judge for who lives and who dies. We're natural creatures, therefore all these impulses and behaviors are natural, not just one or the other. If I had to choose one to respect and emulate, it wouldn't be the death-squad forming proclivity, and incidentally I'm pretty surprised that revenge killing has such cachet here on DU. The behavior is understandable, but I can't support it.