No statute of limitations for crimes against humanity

[Richard A]

In the run-up to Christmas, the llamas did not report on another news item. Far from Ukraine, officers of justice finally came knocking on the door of a woman in her 90s living a hitherto quiet life in Germany. Almost 80 years before, under no compulsion to do so (as the court was to emphasise), she got a job in a concentration camp and dutifully kept in order the records of some 10,000 deaths. She saw herself as merely part of the system. The court was to show rather more mercy than those she had served: she got off with a sentence of 2 years suspended.

Was this too lenient? Well, at the age of 97, she may well not live to see the end of 2 years. And suspending it makes the point that Germany now has a more humane legal system.

[Heid the Ba]

I thought the sentence was because she was tried in a juvenile court because that is what she was at the time of the offence? Again, unlike other jurisdictions.

[Heid the Ba]

Deleted: doppelpost.

[Lianachan]

I thought the sentence was because she was tried in a juvenile court because that is what she was at the time of the offence? Again, unlike other jurisdictions.

Yeah, I thought this too.

[Richard A]

Arneb would probably be able to advise here. In England, juvenile courts have, for heinous cases, passed sentences of considerably longer than 2 years, albeit less than an adult would get - Jon Venables and Robert Thompson got 8 years apiece for the murder of Jamie Bulger. But age at the time of conviction can also be a factor - it was reported in the Pinochet case that Spain does not permit people over 80 to be sent to jail - again unlike England, as Rolf Harris and others have found out.

[Arneb]

I'll chime in...

An interesting case, which fills me with conflicting emotions. As Richard describes, she went into the administration of a concentration camp under no pressure to do so; so I can see the point of her conviction. OTOH, Germany has allowed the big guns (and, for that matter, those with, you know, guns) to get off the hook either lightly or even completely unscathed. Is it just to try one of the smallest of wheels, when no larger ones are available anymore, through fault of Germany's lackluster prosecution alone? Question marks remain. The fact remains that the Consitutional Court ruled in the 60w that "small Wheels" in the death machinery could only be tried for being accessory to murder if there was a specific act of nurder they were complicit in - in the huge machinery of the concentration camps, this was well-nigh impossible to prove, which is why there were so few convictions. This principle was only overturned in the few trials of the post-millenium period. Most helpers had long since died by then.

But, justice must be served. Neither her age now, nor her age at the time of the crime are relevant for the indictment and the conviction. The count she was charged on was being accessory to (10,000-fold) murder (not crimes against humanity), and yes, there is no statute of limitations for murder in Germany.

The fact she landed in front of a youth court has a simple explanation: She was 18 to 19 in the period concerned, and the age of majority at the time was 21. There is no possibility to "upgrade" a defendant below the age of maturity to adult criminal law in Germany (as the US loves to do in order to get higher sentences); since the age of maturity was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1975, courts have had the option to "downgrade" a defendant from adult to minor criminal law between the ages of 18 and 21 due to a lack of maturity, following in dubio pro reo. For the secretary, this played no role, as she was legally a minor at the time of her crime. A youth chamber it had to be.

The highest sentence you can get in minor criminal law is 10 years, and even that is a rare occurence. Only in cases where general penal law stipulates a prison sentence of more than ten years can a minor be sentenced to more than five. The relatively lenient sentence in the secretary's case resulted from mitigating circumstances: Her contribution, while indespensable, was small, and it was strictly limited to clerical tasks. 2 years is exactly the the limit up to which a sentence can be suspended on probation.

There is no upper age limit for incarceration in Germany, but severely impairede or terminally ill inmates generally get a suspension and are released on probation as long as they do not pose a danger to the public anymore.

[Richard A]

The rationale of her appearing before a juvenile court makes complete sense. In England - a reminder to those outside the UK that Scotland and Northern Ireland have different legal systems - the same would apply. There have sometimes been high-profile cases where there has been a public call to try juveniles as adults, but like Germany, we don't.

The small wheels versus big guns issue recurs from time to time. In the early 90s, soldiers of the Frontier Troops of the GDR went on trial for the murder of those attempting to flee across the Berlin Wall. Of course, they were not just administrators but personally fired the shots - and, as with Irmgard Furchner, were under no pressure to be there: I am told that although the GDR had compulsory military service, being posted to Berlin was a privilege reserved for the most loyal. But equally, most of their commanding officers, let alone architects of the policy, went on to live successful lives in the new reunified Germany. A German lawyer I met at a conference at that time was direct as to his view: "we can't get the senior people but at least we can get the guards". And although The Hague has seen trials of the occasional Milosević and Karadzić, it has largely been the most junior members of the regime who wound up there. I am told by a colleague who's in a position to know what she's talking about that many of their superiors are now to be found in private security companies across Europe.

But the no time limit is an important principle. It lays down a warning to, for example, a patriotic 20 year old Russian that he may survive to the end of the war but that's not to say that when he's living a comfortable retirement, the hand of justice won't come knocking.

[tubeswell]

I’m surprised that there’s still people living who could’ve been employed in one of those jobs during that time period.

[Arneb]

She is 97. She was 19 when her stint in Stuthof ended in '44. She is indeed at the extreme end, quote possibly her trial is the last, or at least, one of the last, say, three or five.

[Heid the Ba]

Some thoughts:
Had she been a rocket scientist she would have been spirited off and given an unlimited budget.
She was about seven when Hitler came to power, something, something Jesuits. My dad had some sympathy for the Hitler Youth he fought in Normandy. He grew up in Glasgow and was desperate to get out of the city, go camping, hillwalking etc. So he joined the Scouts, had he been born in Essen it would have been the Hitler Youth and indoctrination as well as campfires.

[Мастер]

Some thoughts:
Had she been a rocket scientist she would have been spirited off and given an unlimited budget.
She was about seven when Hitler came to power, something, something Jesuits. My dad had some sympathy for the Hitler Youth he fought in Normandy. He grew up in Glasgow and was desperate to get out of the city, go camping, hillwalking etc. So he joined the Scouts, had he been born in Essen it would have been the Hitler Youth and indoctrination as well as campfires.

My impression was, at some point at least, joining the Hitler Youth was just the normal thing that everyone did. At least that’s what a German co-worker told me when it came out that the pope had been Hitler Youth.

[Arneb]

Jungvolk and Hitler Youth was not only the thing to do, as with the Young Pioneers and Free German Youth in the GDR, it was compulsory - if you were deemed worthy, that is. My godfather told me the story of shame and humiliation when someone found out he was a "Second Degree Half-Breed" Jew and threw him out of his youth orchestra.

I can totally feel what Heid feels about the secretary, and even more so what his father felt about Hitler Youth. We'd have to wait for the written sentence and its reasons, but I think the fact that she grew up with nothing but Hitler and being indoctrinated from childhood onwards about how Germans had to defend themselves in a war against Jews, Reds, Poles, homosexuals, etc. may have provided alleviating circumstances. Still the fact remains nobody had to commit themselves to being a small wheel in the annihilation machine, yet she did. And it is unthinkable she "didn't know what happened", as many Germans claimed after the war, because she was the very person keeping the books in order.

Frau Furchner has since appealed her conviction.

[Мастер]

Frau Furchner has since appealed her conviction.

I seem to recall from the cannibal case, that in the German legal system, the appeals court can not only reduce the sentence or overturn the conviction, they can also lengthen the sentence, making the appeal risky. Is this correct?

I also recall from the cannibal case that killing someone with their permission does not remove the criminal liability in Germany.

[Richard A]

Arneb's last point is important. And a range of agencies tasked with hunting down those involved in Nazi atrocities have recognised as much: in the 1990s, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre itself took no interest in individuals who had merely had a Party card. By no means every Hitler Youth (or German Girls' Federation) member was personally involved in atrocities - a lot were like the ones Heid's dad met: simply cannon fodder in Russia or, later, France. But some chose to be particularly committed. The comparison with the GDR is a good one: you had to be a member of the Free German Youth and if you were male, you had to do military service, but you didn't have to be part of the day-to-day mechanism of repression.

Interesting that Frau Furchner has said she now wishes she was never at Stutthof. (Of course she bloody knew what went on there - and before she got there, as well. She only signed up in 1943 - by which time there was no great secret about what the Final Solution was.) I would have thought an obvious answer to the question, "why did you volunteer for a job at Stutthof?" would have been, "Young man (or woman), do you have any idea of what the war was like? A job in Stutthof meant our family had food on the table, every day." And she wasn't the only one of her type. Downfall may have spawned countless parodies featuring Trump, Boris Johnson, Putin and others, but in its opening, the real secretary to Hitler portrays herself in much the same way that I'm sure Frau Furchner does: "I wasn't an enthusiastic Nazi. I was excited at getting a job that meant I met the top people." Understandable for a teenager.

[Arneb]

One correction/clarification: Junge Pioniere and FDJ were de rigueur in the GDR, but not compulsory. You would find the admission form in the gift box you received when starting school, and you would be an outsider if you didn't enter, but no law compelled you. The coercion wasn't subtle, but you could abstain, as our GDR born friends can attest.