Argumentative Essay: Should Nazi Guards Be Prosecuted?

434 Words2 Pages

Have you ever wondered what happened to the Nazi guards alive during the Holocaust? Former Nazis to this day are still being prosecuted, but should they really be? Nazi guards should not be put into jail anymore for many reasons. First, Nazi guards wouldn’t have been able to stop the massacre from happening. When they signed up to become Nazis, they didn’t actually know what was going on, and when they got there, if they were to testify against the killing, they would have just been shot. This shows that they shouldn’t still be prosecuted. According to article two, they knew that they would be given tasks when they signed up for being a Nazi, but in article two, a guard named Groening quoted, “We were reminded that we had sworn an oath with the motto ‘My loyalty is my honor,’ and that we could prove this loyalty by doing this task which was now given to us—the details of which we would find out later.” So basically, they didn’t know what their tasks as Nazi guards were going to be until they were given to them. When people like Groening found out what was going on with the concentration camps, they …show more content…

Articles 1,3, and 4 all say that they were not directly involved in these crimes. Article 1 states, “That verdict was important because, as a bookkeeper, he was even more removed from the killing than a guard like Demjanjuk would have been.” Article 3 states “...even though there is no evidence of him committing a specific crime.” Lastly, article 4 states, “Most observers call for a hunt for the Holocaust perpetrators who have evaded justice for decades, but others point to their old age, legal issues and difficulty in proving the crimes, arguing that after nearly 80 years, the pursuit should come to a conclusion.” These all show that they were not involved in any direct crimes, so they should not be