Nazi Crime
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Nazi crime or Hitlerite crime ( or ) 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, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
(1933–1945) that is also classified as a
crime against humanity Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as ...
(in particular,
genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
) or other persecutions of people due to their membership in a particular national, political, social, ethnic or religious group. Nazi crimes in Poland were perpetrated against tens of millions of
Polish people Polish people, or Poles, are a West Slavic ethnic group and nation who share a common History of Poland, history, Culture of Poland, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Central Europe. The preamble t ...
and caused the deaths of millions, especially
Jews Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
, members of the resistance,
Romani people {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Romani people , image = , image_caption = , flag = Roma flag.svg , flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress , po ...
,
socialists Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and socia ...
, and homosexuals. Millions of non-Polish
Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
victims and Soviet prisoners of war were also subjected to Nazi atrocities after being brought to Poland. The definition of also covers destruction of property, such as the
destruction of Warsaw The destruction of Warsaw was Nazi Germany's razing of Warsaw, the city in late 1944, after the 1944 Warsaw Uprising of the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish resistance. The uprising infuriated German leaders, who decided to dest ...
.


Types of crimes


Physical crimes

The crimes which were committed during the
Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
included physical crimes. In
Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
, 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 (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...
during the
Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
. 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 burned alive. The physical crimes which the Nazis committed also included "criminal assault on innocent and helpless 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 (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
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, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...
; 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, or black did not survive".Blutinger, 274 There were some individuals who excelled at carrying out Nazi crimes. Oswald Kaduk 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 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 (), that being the modern German legal system (), is a system of civil law which is founded on the principles laid out by the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, though many of the most important laws, for example ...
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"."


See also

* Communist crime * *
Nazi crimes against the Polish nation War crime, Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and Axis powers, Axis collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland, along with Schutzmannschaft#Police battalions, auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occu ...
*
Nuremberg Trials #REDIRECT Nuremberg trials {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from move ...
*
Pursuit of Nazi collaborators The pursuit of Nazi collaborators refers to the post-World War II pursuit and apprehension of individuals who were not citizens of the Third Reich at the outbreak of World War II but Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, collabor ...
*
The Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...


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. 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. "The Representation of the Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies in German Discourse after 1945." ''German History'' 17.2 (1999): 221–240. History Reference Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. *Wittmann, Rebecca Elizabeth. "Indicting Auschwitz? The Paradox of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial." ''German History'' 21.4 (203): 505. History Reference Center. Web. 10 Oct. 2012 Law of Poland