Mennonite Nazi War Crim Dies in bed In Canada

[Ken]

Ken imagine you were 17. You had never really had the opportunity to go to Sunday School. Many of your older relatives that were still around and had not been deported to Siberia were too traumatized from the rape and murder they had witnessed in their own families to really give you anything of a stable home life. And then some people came along and treated you like a human being. They told you that the people who had hurt you were scum and you were actually not a bad person. I bet you anything that you would have been susceptible to their lies.
I doubt very much that in 1941 when he supposedly joined the SS as an interpreter that he had any idea what they actually did. Keep in mind that there were people even in your country with names like Kennedy that still thought they were not that bad at that time. And by the time he found out, to leave the SS would have been a death wish.
What he did was wrong. Just as wrong as the millions of people who choose not to speak out against the baby killers in America today.
Something tells me that many of those people may have a harder time explaining their actions when they face God than this man did but I leave all that to a merciful God who really knows the hearts and minds of all people.

I still don't buy it. People in Ukraine had a very good idea what the Nazis were about in 1941. And he chose to join an elite SS death squad that actually wore black uniforms with death's head emblems on their caps. Not the vastly larger Wehrmacht that was a more conventional army

He chose to join these guys who who's reason for existence was hunting and killing Jews



Instead of these guys who were fighting the USSR



And everyone in Ukraine in 1941 probably knew the difference.

[appleman2006]

Guess we will just disagree on this then. I am guessing the fact that he was given the job of interpreter in the SS also played into it which was most likely not offered if he joined the army. I doubt much was being said in 1941 in the USSR about Hitler’s treatment of the Jews as Stalin was no angel either.
I am just being honest. I am not sure I would have had the courage to do the right thing had I been placed in the same situation as a 17 year old. And as I said seeing how easily most young people wilt on important moral issues today refusing to go against popular thinking even when the stakes are much lower I doubt I am alone. But I am impressed if you are sure you would have done the right thing.

[Ken]

Guess we will just disagree on this then. I am guessing the fact that he was given the job of interpreter in the SS also played into it which was most likely not offered if he joined the army. I doubt much was being said in 1941 in the USSR about Hitler’s treatment of the Jews as Stalin was no angel either.
I am just being honest. I am not sure I would have had the courage to do the right thing had I been placed in the same situation as a 17 year old. And as I said seeing how easily most young people wilt on important moral issues today refusing to go against popular thinking even when the stakes are much lower I doubt I am alone. But I am impressed if you are sure you would have done the right thing.

I don't know what the right thing was for a 17 year old in 1941 or what I would have done if I was there at age 17. None of us do. But knowing myself and my political inclinations at age 17 I'm quite certain I would not have joined an all-volunteer organization that required one be a fanatical Nazi just gain admission. I probably would have wound up in the regular army with the vast majority of my classmates and fellow German/Ukrainian youth and just tried to make the best of it. About 14 million German men from all walks of life served in the regular Army during WW2 just like in the US. Only a few thousand volunteered to serve in the Einsatzgruppen death squads dedicated to implementing Hitler's final solution.

[Josh]

I still don't buy it. People in Ukraine had a very good idea what the Nazis were about in 1941.

And anyone in Ukraine who was fighting the USSR welcomed the Nazis as allies.

And he chose to join an elite SS death squad that actually wore black uniforms with death's head emblems on their caps.

Maybe you aren’t aware of this, but the purpose of armed forces is to cause death and destruction.

Not the vastly larger Wehrmacht that was a more conventional army

He chose to join these guys who who's reason for existence was hunting and killing Jews

… you have a strange understanding of WWII history.

More interestingly after all this hot air you once again are siding yourself with the people in Ukraine fighting Russia. Perhaps you too will be labelled as a Nazi sympathiser 80 years from now. Be careful when thinking that one side in a war are the “good guys”.

[Jeff Altweg]

Thanks so much, Neto, for that detailed info....Guess that's what menno-net is all about , someone has credible info , somewhere , about almost everything Anabaptist.....my info is mostly 2nd hand , even hearsay, and stuff i can dig up...And you are a Platdeutch speaker, that's real cool.
i've always heard that the connection between the Nazi SS ,and the 'Russian' Mennonites was very close , didn't realize it was that close..Himmilar was Hitler's next in line....
Also, someone mentioned the decade before WWll, the Ukraine was almost destroyed , and starved ,many millions died......The mennonites ,what was left of them , were right there......
The Anabaptist churches were completly dissolved in Germany after the "Great Leader", Hitler ,took over ,they all joined him , they never recovered ..So we need to not be so hard on the Ukranian Mennonites , They went through a lot..
As for Oberlander , he chose to live most of his life as a lie , a really big lie, and he's now at a place where it's between him and God.....

[Ken]

I still don't buy it. People in Ukraine had a very good idea what the Nazis were about in 1941.

And anyone in Ukraine who was fighting the USSR welcomed the Nazis as allies.

And he chose to join an elite SS death squad that actually wore black uniforms with death's head emblems on their caps.

Maybe you aren’t aware of this, but the purpose of armed forces is to cause death and destruction.

Not the vastly larger Wehrmacht that was a more conventional army

He chose to join these guys who who's reason for existence was hunting and killing Jews

… you have a strange understanding of WWII history.

More interestingly after all this hot air you once again are siding yourself with the people in Ukraine fighting Russia. Perhaps you too will be labelled as a Nazi sympathiser 80 years from now. Be careful when thinking that one side in a war are the “good guys”.

It is you who has a misunderstanding of WW2 history if you believe that the Nazi SS and German Army were one and the same. Sometimes they cooperated, sometimes they operated at cross purposes. The SS commandeering of railroads to transport Jews to concentration camps actually hindered war efforts on the eastern front.

Here is a long list of most wanted NAZI war criminals from WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m ... _criminals The vast majority were members of the SS. A few were in local militias or constabularies that cooperated with the SS. Out of the 45 people listed as most wanted war criminals by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, only two were in the regular German Army. And they were in German units accused of killing Italian officers and soldiers after the Italian armistice so it was a complete separate circumstance from the Holocaust.

This is despite the fact that about 15 million men served in the German Army compared to only a few thousands in the SS Einsatzgruppe mobile death squads.

[Josh]

i've always heard that the connection between the Nazi SS ,and the 'Russian' Mennonites was very close , didn't realize it was that close

No, they aren’t.

[Neto]

i've always heard that the connection between the Nazi SS ,and the 'Russian' Mennonites was very close , didn't realize it was that close

No, they aren’t.

There is a tendency to assume that everyone THEN knew what we know NOW - hindsight. There was a lot of deception at work there. They only saw what they were intended to see. The same thing is happening now, and someday those who come after us will know what we may now only suspect, at best.

[Ken]

i've always heard that the connection between the Nazi SS ,and the 'Russian' Mennonites was very close , didn't realize it was that close

No, they aren’t.

There is a tendency to assume that everyone THEN knew what we know NOW - hindsight. There was a lot of deception at work there. They only saw what they were intended to see. The same thing is happening now, and someday those who come after us will know what we may now only suspect, at best.

I don't know how big the Ukrainian Mennonite population was in 1941. Reportedly in the neighborhood of 100,000? And how many of them were young men. But as far as I know, there were only two who were known to have actually joined the SS and were implicated in war crimes. Helmut Oberlander and Jack Reimer. I suspect the vast majority made different choices.

I think it is actually rather slanderous to say that Ukrainian Mennonites were tight with the SS when we only know of two of them who joined. Or only two of them who were implicated in war crimes. If there were actual squads of SS recruited out of the Mennonite colonies it would be different. But that doesn't seem to have been the case. The question is whether Oberlander and Reimer were the exception or the norm? From the record it seems more likely that they were the exception.

There were actual SS units recruited out of other ethnic enclaves. For example, here is a Bosnian Croat SS division



And here is an ethnic German SS division recruited out of Galacia on the border of Ukraine and Poland around Lviv. The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS



It was an all-volunteer force. This was one of their recruiting posters



I don't see any sign in the historical record that any similar units were recruited out of Mennonite colonies in Ukraine.

[Soloist]

This man may have made mistakes, but if he did do what he is accused of, he certainly wasn’t very repentant.