That's right, here in Minnesota we have some great things: the Mall of America, 10,000 lakes and now the discovery of a Nazi commander who destroyed villages in Poland and had men women and kids killed during World War 2.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/13/poland-confirms-minnesota-man-nazi-commander/99132818/

Apparently Poland has been piecing together info about the guy from testimonies of his subordinates and probably other sources as well and just recently confirmed it was him, and he most likely lives within a 10 mile radius of me in the Minneapolis area. Poland is currently working on arresting and extraditing him back to Europe where, if convicted, he will be spending life in prison.

Or, as I would like to say, only 3-5 years. The guy is 98 years old; I doubt he will be living much longer anyway.

As we always say, Hitler did nothing wrong!
  
Obviously I'm just kidding. You should go to his house and yell at him or something.

This might sound weird, and just to clarify, I'm not sympathetic towards the Nazis or anything, but I kind of hate the idea that these people are still being hunted down and thrown in prison. He was directly involved in some horrible things and I'm sure a whole lot of people's blood is on his hands, but if he's that old, has been living peacefully and just wants to live a simple life until he passes, I say leave him alone. If he's had any kind of change of heart since what happened decades upon decades ago, then I'd say that having to live with what he did and, if religious, understanding that everything he's committed is going to catch up to him after death is punishment enough.

m0ssb3rg935 : I can agree with you on that, and have often thought about that aspect, but I can go either way. Like you said, there may be no point in hunting people down for war crimes that happened so long ago, especially if they are close to death anyway. On the other hand, however, continuing these manhunts may send a message to future war criminals that there is no place and no TIME on Earth where they can hide out until death to avoid being arrested to make them think twice about doing such acts. But I also understand that back then Germany was in a prime condition to take over the world at the time. So crimes like that didn't matter much to the Nazis back then. Not when soldiers were pretty much conditioned through propaganda to see Jews as less than human.

I can see it maybe sending a message, but anecdotal as it might be, I still don't know many people who are actually deterred by law. Most people I know do what they do regardless of law or consequence of being caught, and wouldn't do the things they don't if they were safe to do. But like I said, that's just one guy's experience with the people around him. Might be a redneck pride kinduh thing, being a Tennessean and all. It's kinduh like the Geneva Convention in the way that it doesn't really impact die hard ideologues like political or religious extremists.

That's great, he will be convicted for his crime albeit he will only serve a couple months (if that) in prison. I have to wonder though if these former nazis ever came to terms with what they did.

Well, not everyday you find some former WWII commander alive now that we're nearing the 80th anniversary of its start.

They should at least get info from him, whatever little he still has. He actively participated in a dark episode of our history and maybe he can give some more insight on what happened. That is, if he still keeps anything from that era or has thrown it to the fireplace because of a change of heart he had or his descendants being ashamed of what he is if they discovered the truth (kinda unlikely, but not impossible).

He's now too old to be imprisoned, and in an attempt to show we're different of what they once were he'll be spared from jail. Tracking down these people only clears up some of the history, because I'm sure he would have been considered dead for a long time. Other than that, there's little to do. They spared no one, are we like them?

Wow, that's kinda cool having a former revolutionary army in the same area with you, will he gets a public execution? If yes, please record it and send the video to me, or just livestream the execution.

I'm just kidding obviously

I came across the article while scrolling through my AP (Associated Press) app after looking at something else. I totally did Nazi that coming.

Baritron :   That's right. Hitler didn't actually commit war time atrocities. His subordinates did. Under his orders.

 Every commander under the Reich fuhrer was subject to his orders. Had our allies lost that war, commanders serving under Patton would be subject to the exact same charges after escaping and being 98 years of age. Victor draws up persecution against long defunct enemies. Hey. At least every person here gets an excuse to promote more hate.

 Is there a cure for hate? Yes. Forgiveness. Open your heart. Realize our souls are not lost forever as we still live. Even after good souls leave us to receive their destiny, they are not lost so long as they achieved honourable lives and forgave others.

 Thank you for making us aware of a soul needing to be forgiven. We will pray for him.

 P3
 
 

Killers of women and children, enforcers of abominal experimentation, and hidden themselves away for years from their crimes against humanity.
Unforgivable.

Postman3 : Not encouraging each other to be hateful/violent, I get where you're coming from, but "forgiving" this madness is a poor example to set to others, especially since we may not realize the gravity of WW2 today, or just the gravity of what any political gang can do to a country when they have military control over it.
Hitler and his gang had exploited an impoverished country, and uneducated youth through fear, force and propaganda.
They are criminals, the lowest of all.

m0ssb3rg935 : A murderer who didn't turn himself in because the circumstances permitted it - cowardly. That is not a change of heart.
Pursuit of criminals is not for "punishment," though our definition of justice has been twisted this way.

Ultimately, the criminals and their crimes are being erased - more and more people don't even know what a Nazi was.
It is one of the few pieces of history that provided insight against such threats, and it is being lost.

I don't think there's much you can/should do. If he does actually regret it that alone is enough torture. Especially if he's that old.

It's about 80 years too late for any legal action to be appropriate here. I mean, what's the point? Let some person live the last few years of his life in misery? I mean, not like us Allies were all that righteous. We did what we had to, but, that is exactly the other side's story too. You don't see ex-communists being hunted in droves, or US veterans. Why not show compassion and mercy to an old man who's only lived quietly the rest of his life.

Out of respect for the countless lives lost by their hands, that is the point.

What would be the point of persecuting this guy? He is over 90 years old. You would not get anything worthwhile from him. It is a witch hunt.

Now,I do not defend anything that the Nazis did. They were evil in human form. But this is 70+ years overdue. All you would get is an old guy being confined to a jail cell for what little life he has left. We would be forced to pick up his medical costs,his general care,and his deteriorating mind and body and for what? This is not justice,this is just grasping at straws. I am sure he had to live with what he has done.

On3On : See, detaining and extraditing this guy is a waste of resources and time, though. Shipping him to Warsaw and throwing him in prison doesn't bring any justice because he's basically already won the fight. He's been living a normal life in peace in the US, basically getting off completely free, for decades and has only now, in the last moments of his life, been dug up and had the spotlight shined on him. It won't change what happened and it'll barely spite him since he's about to kick the bucket, anyway. We also don't have the whole story. We don't know if he issued the orders to attack civilians or if it was some psycho fanatics that took action and he was responsible as the commander. We don't know if he fell in line with the ideology or if he was pressed into service. We don't have his story. What would be much more valuable, if he in fact does not suffer from Alzheimer's Disease, would be his first-hand account of the other side of the war. What went on around him while he was in service to his country. After all, it's not like there's no possibility of there being bias in the history books. There's always two sides to the story, and then there's the truth.

That is what you call "getting away with murder."

I think the atrocities perpetrated at that time warrant the punishment of those still alive, but there were enough atrocities in the 19th and 20th Centuries to go around that are not given the same respect. The Turkish genocide of the Armenians; The Joy Girls of Korea; The Small Pox infection of Native Americans; The Tuskegee Experiment on Negros. There are no innocents unfortunately. For every one of these terrible things, mankind will need to atone far into the future. Thankfully, we can be as angelic as we are demonic, and there are many examples of the good works that go toward that atonement. Doctor's without Borders; The World Health Organization; Feed the Children, just to name a few. They are not perfect and are only scratching the surface of need, but at least they are scratching.

I really have no sympathy for a Nazi, but he's already a bag of bones. Just let him die eventually, at least then he will be gone at that point.

On3On :   Forgiveness is always the best example to set, no matter the circumstance. It is the divine approach to things.



 

It is a blessing that I am adequate at math[one of the few it seems]. At age 98 now, the man would have been a teenager in the thirties when the Nazis drafted most of their soldiers. He likely was one of those impoverished and uneducated youth kept in line through fear and propaganda. The regime dominated his young life. The war for Europe would have been over by his mid-twenties. For a true Nazi that military defeat would be devastating. For anyone else, the first breath of freedom in too many years. He didn't have to do it anymore after surrendering. By no means was young Michael the "end victim", yet it's not like any draftees were gleefully ecstatic with what they were assigned to do.

 All too easy for a man not even wanting to kill to drop his gun and walk away, embrace freedom from the tyranny.



 If the world you were born into had made that much of a mess of your early life, I would pity you; never convict you.



 

As it stands, the unforgiving and unrelenting have less chance of salvation than those murderers who let go of their impurities and aspired to an upstanding life.





 I pray for you that multiple influences will convince you to forgive, even those wrongdoers that you have only heard of. Use well what time you have before your clock runs out.


   <3 





P3