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Grandpa was a Nazi — 21 Comments

  1. It seems pretty simple to me. The people who committed the crimes had very little or no conscience and, therefore, never agonized over what they had done or its effects, including what kind of effect it might have on their relatives and descendants.

    The perp’s descendants are more normal, had consciences ,and thus felt tainted and did agonize over what their ancestor had done.

  2. Do you reckon the kids who were Che Guevera shirts feel guilt over Che’s crimes?

  3. Powerful article. Thanks for sharing. Of course the descendants of such people will be deeply affected. The knowledge of their parents’ actions will trickle down the generations in the way they live their lives and teach their own children.

  4. “I’ve never quite understood blaming children or grandchildren for the evil their ancestors did.”

    This is a guilt trip that the left applies only to civilized Westerners. The children of communist monsters are never subjected to this. Nor anyone in the third world.

  5. I feel a great deal of sympathy for decent people like Rainer Hoess, who have done nothing to be ashamed of.

  6. I’m the grandchild of a German man and woman who always hated the Nazis and often spoke their minds despite the atmosphere of strict conformity at the time (my grandmother was always worried if ever my grandfather was late returning home). I myself despair at much of the received wisdom of today accepted without question by the left. I like to think it’s not guilt I’ve inherited from my German grandparents, but a natural inclination to think for myself and not just follow the crowd. I’m lucky: They could have paid with their lives, I at worst might pay with my job or friends.

  7. pst314 – that’s right; I wonder what the descendants of Dzherzinsky, Yagoda, Menzhinsky, and Yezhov are up to?

    I don’t think they should be attacked any more than these poor souls detailed in the article, but man, oh man, is it telling that 9/10 people WOULD feel something “weird” about meeting Hoess, but absolutely nothing upon meeting a descendant of, say, Yezhov (I don’t know if he actually had descendants, but you get the point).

    It’s things like that that truly demonstrate how completely the left has succeeded in airbrushing history. It’s gone to our very emotions, to the point where we can (ironically enough) apply a kind of genetic theory of evil to grandchildren of Nazis, but completely exempt the grandchildren of leftist monsters – and not willingly, with our reason, but in a Pavlovian way, as if we’ve been trained.

    And we have been trained.

  8. I had a fair amount of contact with Germans during my time in Latin America, as co-workers or as fellow tourists. They were all coming to terms with the past, and doing a better job of it than the Japanese. I found Germans more compatible than the French, as Germans were not on a mission to put down the US. At least back then. I found Germans more compatible than the British because they were not as emotionally constipated as the Brits.
    From the link, here is the story of one grandchild of a Nazi.

    Alexandra Senfft is the granddaughter of Hanns Elard Ludin, Hitler’s Slovakia envoy who was involved in the deportation of almost 70,000 Jews. After Ludin was hanged in 1947, his widow raised the children in the belief their father was “a good Nazi.”
    In her book, “The Pain of Silence,” Senfft describes how a web of lies burdened her family over decades, especially her mother, who was 14 years old when her beloved father was hanged.
    “It was unbearable at times to work on this book, it brought up fears and pain, but at the same time I got a lot out of writing it all down,” Senfft, a lively 49-year-old, explained during an interview at a Berlin coffee shop.
    “If I had continued to remain oblivious and silent about my grandfather’s crimes, I would have become complicit myself, perhaps without even being aware of it.”

    By contrast, consider Herta Dé¤ubler-Gmelin .She had her 15 minutes of fame when she called the US justice system “lousy” and compared George Bush to “Adolf Nazi.” When you find out what her father did, you get a different perspective on her attacking the US.

    In the meanwhile, information has emerged about Dé¤ubler-Gmelin’s family history that casts her 2002 remarks in a revealing new light. The fact that she was born in 1943 in what her official Bundestag biography calls “PreéŸburg” could already have given one cause to pause. “PreéŸburg” is the traditional German name for the Slovakian capital of Bratislava. In 1943, Slovakia was a satellite state of Nazi Germany. In 1939, it had been accorded formal independence, while the remainder of Czechoslovakia was occupied by German troops and transformed into a protectorate. The Czech “Sudetenland” had been directly annexed to the German Reich months before.

    The real power in Slovakia was vested in the German envoy Hanns Ludin. After the War, Ludin would be found guilty of war crimes and executed. Ludin’s principal deputy was one Hans Gmelin. A Nazi party member and squadron-leader or “Standartenfé¼hrer” in the paramilitary SA, Gmelin was a jurist by training. He was one of the many jurists that the Nazis dispatched to the occupied territories and German satellite states in order to implement their “new European order.” He was also the father of the future German minister of justice, Herta Dé¤ubler-Gmelin.

    Documentary evidence discussed in an April 25, 2005 article in the Schwé¤bische Tagblatt indicates that Hans Gmelin was directly involved in the deportation of Slovakian Jews to the Nazi death camps. As author Hans-Joachim Lang notes:
    Whether Eichmann was announcing his arrival [in Bratislava] or railway officials came by to discuss “questions relating to the shipment of Jews” or the Reich Central Security Office was welcoming the Slovak government’s “making available of railway equipment,” initials on the documents always confirmed who had been informed: for example, “Gm” for Gmelin.

    An estimated 70,000 Slovakian Jews, representing over three-fourths of the pre-War Jewish population, died in the Nazi camps.
    After the War, Gmelin would be kept prisoner for three years by the Allies. In 1954, he was elected mayor of Té¼bingen: a post that he would hold for the next 20 years

    Puts Herta’s gratuitous criticisms of the US in a different context, does it not? Such as: “In an attempt to expiate my guilt feelings over my father’s conduct in WW2, I will attempt to show that the Americans are as bad as the Nazis.” Herta, I would much prefer that you come to terms with your father’s wartime conduct- you are NOT responsible for how your father behaved when you were an infant- so that you would stop dumping on the Americans.

    It is also of note that Herta Dé¤ubler-Gmelin’s father was Hans Ludin’s assistant, and Alexandra Senfft is a granddaughter of Hans Ludin. Alexander Senfft is dealing in a more healthy manner with her family’s background than is Herta Dé¤ubler-Gmelin. She is coming to terms with it, while Herta’s reaction is to say that the Amis are as bad as the Nazis, i.e., as bad as her father.

    Neither the German nor English Wikipedia versions on Harridan Herta mention her father’s Nazi background, though both mention her father’s being mayor for two decades.

  9. kolnai
    pst314 – that’s right; I wonder what the descendants of Dzherzinsky, Yagoda, Menzhinsky, and Yezhov are up to?

    Recall that while the above were murderous thugs, they met their fate due to Murderous Thug Number One: Josef Stalin. I would not be surprised to find out that Stalin killed their wives and children, just like he killed them. Dead people cannot take vengeance.

  10. I’ve never quite understood blaming children or grandchildren for the evil their ancestors did.

    because you were raised in a world where people are equal, and genetics and breeding are outside of your knowledge. what a farmer would know and others who had raised and been with beings for a long time, a domesticated person would not know if they misinformed them…

    after all… adoptees do not refelct their adoptive situation, but their natal one… (which is why people have had lawsuits for not being told)

  11. Dé¤ubler-Gmelin is really an arrogant a**. She was dug up again just last week to appear on a talkshow discussing in part the DSK affair. I had hoped that after the Bush/Hitler remark, she would vanish from the public view, but my hopes have been dashed. When you hear her, you realize how superficial and full of clichees her thinking is. She knows nothing of the US. She exemplifies the feeling that only the Germans have learned the lessons of WWII. That her father was mayor of Té¼bingen for 20 years shows how a certain intellectual class is not held to the same standards as the hoi-poloi. Judging by comments on the net to various news items and by positive reactions to people willing to take on the PC police, I think quite a few Germans are getting sick of being talked down to.

  12. Then there are the Japanese, who have gone to the other extreme of never even acknowledging that their parents and grandparents even did anything wrong, as Gringo has also noted. Only within the last few years have Japanese leaders begun to come to terms with the atrocities that Japanese occupiers committed during the war. They have done so grudgingly, incompletely, and possibly not even sincerely. But it’s a start.

  13. I would like for all of the guilt to stop.

    The WWII generation, the younger ones, those who were mere foot-soldiers at that time, are rapidly dying off now. The older people of that era – the ones who actually had power during that time – are long gone. Modern Germany and modern Japan have almost nothing in common with their WWII regimes.

    Yes, we can all learn from history. But not to assign blame to people now living who had no part in the atrocities of that time.

    Let it go.

  14. Gringo: Thanks for that insight into Herta Dé¤ubler-Gmelin’s background.

    I have long felt that a key reason for the demonization of the United States is to bring it down to the moral level of the moral level of the evil regimes that America’s critics prefer.

  15. Do you reckon the kids who were Che Guevera shirts feel guilt over Che’s crimes?

    I would doubt that most of them know who Che was, let alone his crimes or even his racism.

  16. Exodus 20:5
    You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

  17. Deuteronomy 24:16 –

    “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”

    Ezekiel 18:3 –

    “As surely as I live, declares the sovereign LORD, you will no longer quote this proverb* in Israel. For everyone belongs to me, the parent as well as the child – both alike belong to me. The one who sins is the one who will die.”

    And cf. the entirety of Ezekiel 18.

    Contradiction between Deuteronomy-Ezekiel and Exodus? Don’t know:

    http://www.religioustolerance.org/ostroot01.htm

    * The proverb is: “The parents eat sour grapes / and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

  18. I once knew a lad who was married to a Jewish girl. She insisted he hang his father’s SS graduation picture inside the hall closet door and then finally that he hang it in some other abode.

  19. Some of us have no issues at all with history…

    Latvian Legion
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_Legion#War_Crimes_Involvement

    The Latvian Legion was a formation of the Waffen-SS during World War II created in 1943 and consisting primarily of ethnic Latvians.

    The 15th Division was administratively subordinated to the VI SS Volunteer Corps, but operationally it was in reserve or at the disposal of the XXXXIII Army Corps, 16th Army, Army Group North.

    The 19th Division remained active in the Courland Pocket until May 1945, when it was among the last of Nazi Germany’s forces to surrender at the close of World War II.

    The Latvian Legion was created in January 1943 on the orders of Adolf Hitler following a request by Reichsfé¼hrer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Technically, it was a volunteer unit, but one month after the unit was founded, German occupation authorities in Latvia started conscripting military age men, as close to none had volunteered.

    They were given a choice between “volunteering” for SS Waffen legions, serving in the German army (Heer) as “auxiliaries” (labourers behind the front lines), commanded by German officers and often treated as subhumans, or being sent to a slave labour camp in Germany. Those who tried to avoid one of those options were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

    As a result, only 15-20% of the soldiers serving in the legion were actual volunteers

    Soldiers serving in the Legion did not necessarily share Nazi ideology and were not completely loyal to Germany. A report by the commander of the 15th Division, Oberfé¼hrer Adolf Ax on 27 January 1945 says: “They are first and foremost Latvians. They want a sustainable Latvian nation state. Forced to choose between Germany and Russia, they have chosen Germany, because they seek co-operation with western civilization. The rule of the Germans seems to them to be the lesser of two evils.”

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    hope was that the legion would fight off the Soviet Union, until it was no longer dangerous to Latvia, and then turn its arms against Nazi Germany, as a repeat of the Latvian War of Independence of 1918-1920, when Latvian forces managed to fight off both the Red Army and German forces. This was reflected in one of the most popular legion songs which went “We will beat the Russians now and we will beat the Germans after that” (with euphemisms for Russians and Germans).[3] Also Latvians, like Estonians and to lesser degree Lithuanians, believed that Western powers, especially Britain, will come to their aid any time soon, as they did in 1918-1920.

    they were betrayed at Yalta…

    “The Baltic Waffen SS Units (Baltic Legions) are to be considered as separate and distinct in purpose, ideology, activities, and qualifications for membership from the German SS, and therefore the Commission holds them not to be a movement hostile to the Government of the United States.”

    free book:
    THE LATVIAN LEGION
    According to Independent Observers
    home.mira.net/~vanagi/AV/Latvian_Legion.pdf

    The year of Russian occupation from June 1940 to July 1941 Latvia remembers as the Year of
    Horror.

    The 15th SS Latvian Division was one of the most decorated foreign volunteer forces. Who had won no less than 13 Knight Crosses! This was the highest score of any non-German Legion.

    By January 1945, the Germans withdrew seven divisions from Courland to defend the German Reich, leaving 25 divisions to hold a 161kms front line in Latvia. The 19th SS Division remained in “Fortress Courland” engaging Soviet forces until the end of the war. Most of the surviving Latvians surrendered to Soviet forces, and were subsequently sent to Siberia and probably executed. The division went through five commanders. The last commander was SS-Generalleutnant Bruno Streckenbach from 19 May 1944 to 8 May 1945.

    http://www.lettia.lv/en_a_legionari-nirnberga.html

    Everybody has seen soldiers with white helmets and white gloves standing along the walls in Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal hall. They are Americans. But only few know, that people dressed in similar uniforms – former Latvian and Estonian legionaries – were guarding imprisoned Nazis and securing facilities of Allied army.

    “In 1946 next to English and American armies there were founded so called Guard companies. (The first one was called Viesturs company.) Legionaries were recognized as units in no way connected to the crimes of SS.” “Four companies (approx. 1000 men), including Viesturs company, in 1947 took over the guard at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice (!) and the prison!” “At their sleeves and later at their helmets there were the red-white-red national colors of Latvia” “Besides it shall be taken into account, that attitude of Allied authorities to the Nazi war criminals was very serious and consistent”.

    ”References about the Baltic soldiers were good[…]. Almost all “viesturians” were former legionaries, therefore soldier drilling was not required, only “americanised” military code had to be adjusted to. […] Officers and soldiers of the company were on garrison duty in several cities of Germany (from spring 1947 – were also on guard in Nuremberg Palace of Justice and the prison).”

    “Paramilitary units of Latvians and Estonians in Germany were also working at the Nuremberg Trials (1947 – 1949), where they were guarding war criminals. […] guard posts were located not only at the perimeter of the Palace of Justice, but also at the doors to the cells. Baltic guards were escorting inmates to the walking areas and to the interrogations. […] Only two functions at the Nuremberg Trials were performed by American military police: escort of inmates in the court hall and to the execution (hanging).” “When Berlin crisis took place and airlift for supply of West Berlin started to operate, viesturians were transferred to the forests near the border to secure the most important field storages of the USA Army. After that Latvian guards were transferred to the surroundings of Stuttgart to guard USA Army corps headquarters”

    good for image reference, latvian language
    http://www.hot.ee/vaikal/vahi.htm
    http://www.hot.ee/hintzer/album_8.htm

    history has a lot of answers and stories that are rarely known or told any more…

  20. Grandpa was a Nazi? What’s about grandma? What makes You so sure that she wasn’t a Nazi too? The sins of Your father? Or the sins of Your father/mother? Excluding women in general statements by unsing onley the male form is sexism, isn’t it?

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