Dear Friends,
The attached article was written in response to an op-ed on the popular New Zealand website suff.co.nz in which the author
expressed a degree of sympathy for repentant criminals who served their punishment. Among the cases she mentioned was
that of Austrian S.S. volunteer Willi Huber, who emigrated to New Zealand after WWII, and became a local hero for his role in
developing a ski resort on Mt. Hutt. Huber was a much-decorated Waffen-SS commander, who denied knowledge of any Nazi
atrocities and expressed admiration for Hitler. This article explains the rationale for pursuing Nazi war criminals.
Stuff refused to print the article, which was not that surprising given the fact that New Zealand was the only Anglo-Saxon
country which admitted suspected Nazis, but refused to take legal action against them, once they were revealed to the government (by us).
With best wishes,
Efraim
Lana Hart’s op-ed (“How long before we can forgive?” June 7) raised many important questions regarding the justice system and the attitude toward criminal offenders, among them the recently-deceased former Waffen-SS officer Willi Huber, who achieved hero status among local skiers for his contribution to the establishment of the skiing facilities on Mt. Hutt. Ms. Hart brings several examples of people punished for their behavior and a wide range of responses by the criminals to their punishments. And while she notes the importance of the severity of the original wrongdoing in determining a person’s punishment, and the principle of proportionality, she fails to understand the significance of Huber’s crimes and fails to attribute sufficient importance to his lack of remorse and his obvious adulation for the leader of the most genocidal regime in human history.
Continue reading “Op-ed published in New Zealand”
