War crimes: can a victim become a perp? Or does being a victim absolve?

[Mairead]

Israel has refused to extradite a Polish-born Jew accused of war crimes against Germans in World War II.

Solomon Morel, an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor, is said to be responsible for the deaths of up to 1,500 prisoners.

Mr Morel commanded a Russian-run camp where Germans were held after the Soviets occupied Poland in 1945.

Mr Morel moved to Israel in 1994 when inquiries began in Poland. A previous extradition call was refused in 1998.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4659985.stm

[bloom]

1. ..."victim become a perp?"

Generally - some victims become perps and it doesn't absolve - victim/perps just make more victims.


I don't know anything about that particular case. But if someone didn't have a choice - if a rapist held a gun to your head and said you had to have sex with someone else - that does not make you a perpetrator. There has to be some will involved in the matter.

[The Magistrate]

2. An Interesting Case, Ma'am

As a human matter, the fellow has my sympathy: anyone who emerged from Auschwitz and commenced to killing Germans, particulary members of the armed forces or those suspected on Nazi leanings, or colonists in the East, has certainly done something it is easy to understand.

As a legal matter, of course, this makes no difference at all: a great number of persons were killed in Soviet camps after the war, and these deaths generally were murders, and any who committed them were murderers: what any of them may have suffered under occupation does not alter that.

As a legal matter also, Israel is under no obligation to extradite the man, as no extradition treaty exists between it and Poland.

[MisterP]

4. thank heavens that wonderful, wonderful Mr. Morel didn't oversee my

grandpa, or else I wouldn't be here

[Jim Sagle]

5. What did your grandpa do in the war, MisterP?

[The Magistrate]

6. Who Said He Was Wonderful, Sir

A man who has emerged from such an experience is apt to seek vengeance should opportunity come for it; that is an understandable fact of life. A person who survived Auschwitz must engage human sympathy on some level; no one ought to ever have had to endure such a thing....

[samdogmom]

3. Patty Hearst

She started out as a victim but ended up in jail.

[Coastie for Truth]

7. I am familiar with John Sacks' book

There were some classified studies after WW2 about US POWs who, to borrow a phrase from the BBC article "alleged "revenge killings" by American GI's placed in charge of the German and Japanese POW camps (where they had been POWs) at the end of the war."

This was reported in Northern Italy and the Philippines -- US POWs killed their POW camp guards and officers.

Link:http://images.google.com/images?q=pilot+beheaded+by+japanese&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&sa=G&imgsz=small|medium|large|xlarge