During the 12 years of the Nazi Regime unimaginable atrocities were committed by countless Nazis — and when the dust of the Second World War settled a lot of these atrocious monsters were arrested and tried....CONTINUE READING
However, ever there were still people like the head of the snake Adolf Hitler and his right-hand man Joseph Goebbels who committed the cowardly act of suicide to avoid justice and then there were those who weren’t so fortunate.
The pursuit of justice for the crimes committed by a number of comparatively unknown Nazis led to their eventual capture and trial.
Former Nazi members were apprehended after the war; there were others who — managed to avoid justice for years.
This list below highlights some of these lesser-known Nazis who were found hiding in obscure locations and eventually brought to justice, each one as monstrous as the next.
Arthur Rudolph was a Nazi scientist brought to the US under Operation Paperclip to develop rocket technology for the American space program.
Both the Pershing missile and Saturn V rocket were developed with — support from Rudolph. However, Rudolph was in charge of the production of the V-2 rocket, which relied on forced labor from prisoners in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. It’s estimated that 20,000 prisoners died building the rockets.
The US government buried this information until 1982. When it came to light, Rudolph renounced his US citizenship and left the country.
He was not prosecuted for his crimes but was stripped of his NASA Distinguished Service Medal and expelled from Canada.
Rudolph was granted — citizenship in West Germany and died there in 1996. Fedor Federenko, a former Nazi member — who got drafted into the Soviet Army just before the Germans invaded Soviet territory — was caught and sent to Chelm, Poland.
The Nazis then got him to join their auxiliary police unit and shipped him off to Treblinka extermination camp for training.
After being there for a while, he got promoted to boss over 200 other dudes. Their job was to shave, strip, beat, and gas the prisoners brought in.
He claims he never even shot once with his rifle, despite having later trained to be a marksman and executioner and assisting with the cleaning out of the — Warsaw Ghetto.
Fedorenki fled the country immediately after the war, but he was suspected of being a Nazi war criminal. Nevertheless, he obtained citizenship and relocated to Miami in 1973. However, he was arrested and lost his citizenship five years later.
He was also the first Nazi war criminal to be expelled from the United States and returned to the Soviet Union in 1984. After a hearing that went on for nine days, they found him guilty of treason and mass executions.
So, he got sentenced to death and was executed for his crimes in 1987 — which was like 42 years after the war ended.
Back in 1945, Friedrich Karl Berger had a job as a guard at the Meppen sub-concentration camp. His responsibility was to watch over the captives who were made to perform labor under appalling conditions.
Most of these forced laborers died because of being overworked to the point where they just couldn’t recover. When Allied forces got closer to the camp, the Nazis fled and left Berger in charge of moving the prisoners to Neuengamme’s main camp.
Sadly, under his watch, 70 of them died during the transfer. Berger moved to the US in 1959 following the end of the — war and remained there until 2020. However, when his past caught up with him, he admitted to working as a guard in the Neuengamme concentration camp system.
But he said he never saw any prisoner abuse or killings. The United States opted to deport him in November 2020 despite the fact that German authorities lacked sufficient evidence to bring charges against him.
Berger, who was 95 years old, couldn’t imagine what was taking place in front of his eyes — for him, it was absurd to pay the price for his crimes after 75 years but we all know justice has no limits and no time.
Another reason behind his deportation was that the United States didn’t want a former Nazi guard living in their territory because it would damage the image of the country — especially after he was all over the news.
Hans Lipschis who was a part of SS served most of his time at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. As the war was coming to its very end he knew that his life was not going to be an easy one if he stayed in Germany — this is why he fled to the US and started living lowkey in Chicago until 1983 when he was kicked out for lying.
He ended up settling in Germany, but the Simon Wiesenthal Center had their eyes on him and put him fourth on their most-wanted list.
But Lipschis could only evade capture for so long and by long I mean really long time. It was in 2013, when he was finally caught by the law enforcement agencies.
Lipschis owned up to being at the camp but tried to say he was just a cook, not a guard. However, when he got arrested, there was enough evidence linking him to the camp from 1941 to 1945.
But, because so much time had passed there was little to none evidence — that directly stated that he was involved in any kind of murder.
The German government wanted to bring charges against him as they did with John Demjanjuk for being an accessory to murder.
But because of his age and poor health, he was declared unfit to stand trial. So even though they caught him, he still never faced any consequences and passed away in 2016 at 96 years old.
A lady named Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan worked as a female guard at some concentration camps during WWII.
People called her the Stomping Mare because she was pretty darn nasty. Apparently, she did some terrible stuff like hanging and whipping women to death and throwing kids around like they were — nothing.
She even stomped an old lady to death with her boots!
Anyway, after the war, a man named Simon Wiesenthal went looking for her and found out she had fled to Canada and then Queens, pretending to be a regular ol’ housewife under the name Hermine Ryan.
But Wiesenthal and his crew finally caught up with her in the 70s and got her extradited from the US to Germany.
In 1975, they tried her in Düsseldorf, but it took more than five years. They ultimately found her guilty — and sentenced her to life in prison beginning in 1981. But in 1996, she lost a leg to diabetes and got released from prison. She died three years later.
These lesser-known Nazis who had managed to escape punishment for years — were eventually apprehended and put on trial.
Even when justice was slow in coming, it was an essential step in making those accountable for the unthinkable atrocities committed under the Nazi regime.
The Nuremberg Trials’ legacy is still relevant today because bringing war criminals to justice is still essential to prevent further atrocities…CONTINUE READING>>
