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well, one thing is for sure: we are not going to be able to address any of the questions about procedures here. so the question of how this cat got here in the first place is effectively moot.
and when i read the article, i could almost see the lawyer's advice: put yourself out there into the "court of public opinion...be bewildered and that will help generate sympathy"
"but i am bewildered"
"so much the better."
the american relation to folk "with a nazi past" after world war 2 was a whole lot more ambiguous than you might think if your understanding of this period derives from world war 2 films and history channel stuff.
what bor posted above is right concerning "former" nazis whose skills were considered militarily beneficially in the post-war context--so von braun and others who were connected to the rocket development program, and gehlen, the head of nazi intelligence---and many many many others, including a healthy swatch of folk who were war criminals by ANY definition of the term---all were ushered out of europe and away from prosecution because they were understood as a form of war reparations. for example, the information taken from the gehlen org formed the basis for the cia intel re. the ussr....
the fact of this, its scale, its modes of operation are all at this point quite well documented. but this applied mostly to folk---and often really odious folk--whose skills or information was useful to the americans.
in germany right after the war ended, "denazification" came to consist in walking around asking people who wanted to run for office and who were no communist whether they were still nazis. who would say yes? so if they said no and wanted to run for political office, the americans were fine with tht because they were far more concerned that the kpd would get into power than they were that former nazis would remain in power. check for yourself.
as for the immigration controls put onto lower-level former nazis, i am less sure about this area.
on this guy, however, it's really hard to say what happened or why.
training attack dogs at buchenwald and dachau is a problematic past.
training guard dogs is a curious border area in terms of complicity with the machinery that operated within the camps.
the claim of "not knowing" seems like bullshit to me--but here again the question gets realy complex as son as you start pushing into it, what folk do and do not process of political repression that unfolds around them. there is an entire sub-field in german history that is geared around trying to sort this out. "history of the everyday" its called.
then again, my august 1945, it appeared that no-one knew anything anywhere, everyone was surprised. and on this too, it;s hard to know what to make of it exactly.
what is sure is that by 2007, this particular guy probably really did not know.
i dont know---this is a strange situation in many many ways and i dont feel like i have the information required to take much of a position beyond saying that there is not enough information to take a strong position.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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