Headlines may get me into trouble.

This is one entry that may actually cause my first troll/flamage since about 1999 – “You have tattoos? And you have piercings? All of you sick twisted people need to be sterilized.” Never quite forgot it can you tell?

Anyhoo – here’s the full article.

‘Nice, Sweet Lady,’ 83, Deported for Nazi Past
The former SS guard kept her secret buried, even from her Jewish husband. Now exposed, the Bay Area widow, 83, is back in Germany.

Here’s how I think I’m supposed to feel: Nazi scum. I hope they rot in hell. Good riddance. Deportation is too good for her. Etc.

Except that’s NOT how I feel. I thought about this all day yesterday, and all this morning. I don’t know if I can articulate it properly but I’ll try.

I have a military/law enforcement family in a way. Great grandfather was a Detroit police officer. Great Grandmother a homemaker, then a Riveter. One of my great-uncles, and my grandfather, were both in the Air Force and Army respectively – BOTH fought in WWII. One even brought home a Japanese war bride, Aunt Maya (whom my mom still helps take care of). Dad was in the Army. Poe was in the Marines. FIL was in the Army. You get the picture.

My great-uncle, grandfather, and great grandmother never spoke of the war. I mean NEVER. I mean pretended it didn’t exist, and you were not allowed to ask. It was just too painful. And we won. It was a time of great need and great lack no matter what side you were on. Atrocities occurred. On both sides. Let’s not forget the interments while we talk about the holocaust, mmm’kay? Not that I’m comparing them – not at all, however, let’s remember it was war.

This girl was 20 years old. In wartime Germany. You were forced to take sides – but really? Taking sides meant live or die. So – she was a guard. She didn’t have hardly any contact with the Jewish prisoners. She walked the perimeter with a guard dog. At 20. Now, the way I see it is this. You’re a girl in Nazi Germany. Your family isn’t rich, you need to make a living. The regime has taken over everything, so you pretty much have a choice. Marry, prostitute, or work for the regime. ‘Cause if you worked, you worked for them – they had taken over. So she worked for them.

And now we kick her out of the country. After the war ended, she fell in love with a Jewish man, married, immigrated here, and lived her life. Her husband didn’t even know she had worked for the regime. She didn’t tell him. And my guess is based upon all WWII survivors I know, they didn’t talk about the war anyway. Too painful. She knew that it was a terrible thing, so she kept it a secret. That’s why she never applied for citizenship. She was afraid she’d be found out. Ostracized for what the regime and her country did to millions of people.

Everyone has choices in life. But really? What was her choice?

This is an illustration… Say we have a military facility here in the states. Inside that facility terrible things are done to prisoners. But the grunt outside in the tower doesn’t really know about it. He hears rumors of course. But what’s he going to do? These are his superiors. He’s a mere cog in a huge huge machine. Trying to bypass his superiors would probably result in the end of his military career, and then what’s he supposed to do? He was counting on that to get through college – he’ll never go without it. But really – it’s just rumors anyway. He never actually sees the prisoners. The years pass. He meets an Austrian girl. He moves to Austria so she can be near her family. 50 or 60 years go by. His wife has since passed on, but he has a life there now. Along come the Austrian government. They kick him out of the country for being that grunt on the perimeter, because in the time that passed, the atrocities that were being committed inside were brought to light, and the American people as a whole are shunned, spit upon, and loathed. But really – what did he do?

So this 83 year old woman was deported to live with extended family back in Germany. The past 63 years just doesn’t matter. All that matters is when she was a grunt when she was 20 in a war that even the winners don’t speak of. The tentacles of nazi germany have a far reach indeed.

I understand that this may irk some people. It may really piss some of them off. But one of my best friends is Jewish – her family are immigrants from the war. Her comment on the subject was, “There were no winners, just losers. Everyone, and I mean everyone, who was touched by that man has a poison in their blood that eats at them and there’s nothing they can do about it.” The bottom line is I don’t think she should have been deported.