The Bochnia massacre German-occupied Poland 1939

Nazi crime or Hitlerite crime ( pl, Zbrodnia nazistowska or ''zbrodnia hitlerowska'') is a legal concept used in the Polish legal system, referring to an action which was carried out, inspired, or tolerated by public functionaries of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

(1933–1945) that is also classified as a

crime against humanity Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...

(in particular,

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...

) or other persecutions of people due to their membership in a particular national, political, social, ethnic or religious group. Nazi crimes were perpetrated against Communists, homosexuals,

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

Roma Roma or ROMA may refer to: Places Australia * Roma, Queensland, a town ** Roma Airport ** Roma Courthouse ** Electoral district of Roma, defunct ** Town of Roma, defunct town, now part of the Maranoa Regional Council * Roma Street, Brisbane, a ...

, Sinti,

socialists Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the econ ...

Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in ...

and other

Slavs Slavs are the largest European ethnolinguistic group. They speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout northern Eurasia, main ...

, and Soviet prisoners of war. The criminal acts which were committed by the Nazis included physical crimes such as beating, gassing and drowning as well as property crimes.

Types of crimes

Physical crimes

The crimes which were committed during the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

included physical crimes. In

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...

, an estimated 400,000 Jewish people were killed in

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as con ...

during the

. On average per day about 1,864 Jewish people died. Most of the people who were murdered during the Holocaust never received proper burials.Walt, Vinenne
"Genocide's Ghosts."
''Time'', 16 January 2008. Web. 10 Oct. 2012 Ukraine has over 750 mass graves where groups of five or more Jewish people were marched into mass pits and shot in the back. 5,000 Jews were marched from Ukraine into these pits. To save bullets children would be thrown into pits of fire to be drowned. The physical crimes which the Nazis committed also included "criminal assault on guilty and deserving victims" and victims were "beaten, drowned, whipped, shot, ran over, strangled and gassed." These crimes included sexual crimes or crimes that "were directed at women's genitalia." Another 'popular' way the Nazis murdered people was to have them euthanized. The Nazi crimes also included genocide.

Property crimes

The

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

permitted the commission of different crimes including property crimes and crimes against classes of people. The Nazis took away all of the Jews' possessions and incomes in order to make it harder for the Jewish people to live elsewhere before the onset of the Holocaust.Breitman, 11 The victims of the Holocaust were described by the Nazis as "criminals who endangered public safety". The central Nazi camp for Jews between 1940 and 1945 was

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...

; where "at least ten thousand POWs were murdered". Gypsies, as well as Jews and gays were murdered in this concentration camp. "Most of those who entered the Nazi camp system, whether gay, Jewish, Roma, or Sinti, did not survive".Blutinger, 274 There were some individuals who excelled at carrying out Nazi crimes.

Oswald Kaduk Oswald Kaduk (26 August 1906 – 31 May 1997) was a German SS member during the Nazi era. He served as ''Rapportführer'' at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Biography The son of a blacksmith, Kaduk was born in Königshütte, Upper Silesia. Aft ...

was notorious for his extermination practices because of the torture he committed on prisoners in Auschwitz. One of the torture techniques which he used was to "put a cane over a prisoner's neck and he stood on it until the prisoner died." He also would randomly shoot into a group of prisoners "killing whoever got in the way".Wittmann, 530 Many people would do what the German troops ordered them to do in order to keep their families alive. One Jewish man became a policeman in the ghetto where he lived and he later partook in its destruction because he was told that if he did so, his wife and daughter would live. His wife and daughter later died because they were forced into a gas chamber.

Nazi hearings

Following the conclusion of World War II, Nazis were charged with crimes in many different court hearings.Breitman, 13 Important changes were made to the Control Council Law No. 10 by the

Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

because "German jurists exerted pressure on the Allies in order to prevent national or district courts from using Control Council Law No. 10." The changes allowed the Allies to deal with "war crimes, conspiracy to commit war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity".Wittmann, 508

German law The law of Germany (german: das Recht Deutschlands), that being the modern German legal system (german: Deutsches Rechtssystem), is a system of civil law which is founded on the principles laid out by the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of G ...

allowed the death penalty to be imposed for crimes other than murder if they also resulted in the death of the victim. "Most of the mass killings committed in the Political Department at Auschwitz followed some sort of regulated procedure. The murder and torture of children would get a murder conviction due to 'malicious intent'". For a case to be a 'murder case', the only criteria that needed to be present were "thirst for blood, base motives, maliciousness, and brutality which come into question in connection with the prosecution of Nazi war crimes". Along with these criteria, "lust for killing and sadism" were also needed in order to ensure successful prosecutions. When charging a person who was assumed to be responsible for murder, a common question the courts asked the accused was whether excessive cruelty and the maltreatment of prisoners led to their deaths. If not, "the punishment of these people would not have a high priority" for the case to be pursued publicly.Wittmann, 512 "Defendants who had acted on their own initiative or who had shown base motives or excessive cruelty were murderers: many who had not exhibited such behavior (or against whom sufficient evidence of such behavior was lacking) were judged guilty of manslaughter according to the German Penal Code. Many people who had murdered a Jew or a Gypsy during the Holocaust were charged with "merely aiding and abetting murder"."

Notes

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References

*Blutinger, Jeffrey C
"Bearing Witness: Teaching the Holocaust from a Victim-Centered Perspective."
'' History Teacher'' 42.3 (2009): 269-279.

History Reference Center EBSCO Information Services, headquartered in Ipswich, Massachusetts, is a division of EBSCO Industries, EBSCO Industries Inc., a private company headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. EBSCO provides products and services to libraries of very many ...

. Web. 13 Oct. 2012 * Breitman, Richard. "Lasting Effects of the Holocaust." History: Reviews of New Books 38.1 (2010): 1114. History Reference Center. Web. 10 Oct. 2012. *

Margalit, Gilad Gilad Margalit ( he, גלעד מרגלית, 1959 in Haifa, Israel – 23 July 2014) was an Israeli historian, writer, and professor in the Department of General History at the University of Haifa. Margalit's academic research focused on various ...