Here is one truly amazing story:
Those who knew San Francisco’s Elfriede Rinkel never found it remarkable that the German immigrant would marry a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, or attend synagogue with him, or plan to be buried next to him at a cemetery run by a Chevra Kadisha, a Jewish burial society that performs ritual purification.
On Tuesday, though, came a jarring twist: The U.S. Justice Department said the 84-year-old Rinkel had been deported to Germany, nearly half a century after she emigrated to the United States, because she had been a guard at a Nazi concentration camp in World War II where an estimated 90,000 people, many of them Jews, were exterminated.
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The government said Rinkel, a permanent resident alien who never applied for U.S. citizenship, had admitted after a two-year investigation that she had guarded female prisoners at Ravensbruck from June 1944 to April 1945, when the Nazis abandoned the camp to the advancing Allies. She now lives with her younger sister in the German city of Viersen, her brother said.
The Justice Department alleged that Rinkel had used attack dogs to march emaciated inmates to slave-labor sites. More than 130,000 women from dozens of countries — Jews, Gypsies and others — were brought to Ravensbruck during its six years of existence. More than two-thirds of them died of malnourishment, in medical experiments and in a gas chamber, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Fred Rinkel, who grew up in a prominent family in Berlin, fled Germany with a brother as Nazi persecution of the Jews spread. He had trained to be an opera tenor in Germany, but after making his way to San Francisco he settled on a job as a singing waiter. Elfriede Rinkel worked as a furrier.
Fred Rinkel’s past and Jewish heritage were important to him, according to those who knew him. He belonged to B’nai B’rith, one of the world’s largest Jewish organizations.
Filed under: Holocaust |
Bookworm Room (ARCHIVES) 
After 50 years of spotless living, there should be a statute of limitations no matter the horror of prior acts.
Whether they’re buried together or not, they’ll be together in the next world where I really think the issue of the true messiah will have been worked out to the satisfaction of all.
You are more intimately connected to these kinds of events, Book, what do you think should have been done? Was this the right decision, the wrong one, doesn’t matter?
I can’t comprehend the mindset. This is a woman who sicced dogs on prisoners, and then spends her life with a Jewish man. Perhaps she was trying to expiate her sins, but there’s something profoundly dishonest about what she did. It seems more as if she was hiding than doing penance.
erp, I respectfully disagree. The crimes of the Nazis were so horribly horible, unimaginably horrible, and perverted, and sadistic, and evil, that 50 years of allegedly “spotless” living doesn’t erase them. She actively was part of the genocide machine in which babies were yanked from their mother’s arms, tossed into the air and used for target practice, people were routinely and indiscriminatly tortured and brutalized, starved, humiliated, dehumanized, robbed, and murdered. I don’t understand her psychology or her relationship with her husband. Did she atone? Did she actively work to stop genocide in Darfur, to help survivors of the Holocaust, to educate children about the horrors of the time and senseless bigotry? Or did she try to hide, even from God, amongst the remnants of her victims?
When I’m analyzing someone’s psychology, I always need more information and data.
The prisoners were organized into categories, each with a distinctive colorcoded triangle, as well as by nationality. Political prisoners (including resistance fighters and Soviet prisonersofwar) wore red triangles; Jehovah’s Witnesses wore purple triangles; “asocials”
(including lesbians, prostitutes, and Gypsies) wore black triangles; and criminals (common criminals or those who broke Nazi imposed laws) wore green triangles. Jewish women wore yellow triangles, but if they were also political prisoners, they wore a red triangle and yellow triangle that formed a Star of David, or a yellow stripe on top of the red triangle. A letter within the triangle signified the prisoner’s nationality. There was a separate adjacent camp that held about 20,000 men.
The Germans, a very orderly and bureacratic society. Everything has to be shuffled into its neat and tidy slot. Civilization at its worst. It’s a debate between which is worst. Organized annihilation, or Islamic Jihad nihilism.
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Visual___Artistic_Resources/Women_of_Ravensbruck/Who_Were_They_/who_were_they_.html
The institution alleged that she used attack dogs to march prisoners to a place. It didn’t specify exactly what the evidence was and what the charge was.
I’m not a person that you would characterize as…. lenient on the guilty, especially those who are guilty of crimes against humanity. And I’m not just talking about the Nazis either. However, I don’t willingly or eagerly condemn people who might be innocent to perpetual torment. If they are guilty and I am reasonably sure of that fact, then it doesn’t matter to me what happens to them so long as they aren’t around this earth anymore. But for those who might be innocent, or who might be guilty yet have extenuating circumstances, for those I believe mercy is possible.
She acts ashamed of her previous actions, Bookworm. It’s not something you see in Islamic terrorists or those advocating for the UN. It demonstrates the power of influence and cultural intimidation, on a person’s psyche. It demonstrates why the prisoners at GitMo have it easy, they are under almost no stress safe in the knowledge that people are fighting for them outside, and many approve of their acts and disapprove of the US’s conduct.
Oh what a tangeled web we weave, when we first practice to deceive.
You will know when the Islamic Jihad has been destroyed, when their members cower in far flung places, attempting to live lives out of the media spotlight, not caring to bring any attention to themselves in FEAR of the retribution of the United States. That is when their defeat will have been complete.
The US didn’t just “defeat” Imperial Japan and Fascist Germany, we annihilated them. We chased the members of the Nazis down, and we killed them ex post facto. The correct fate of all enemies of humanity, in my view. It wasn’t a gentleman’s war, it was a war of annihilation and purges. Of one belief system against another. Nobody, not even the Berkley guys, would defend the Nazis. That is the result of absolute victory. To destroy so many and to execute the remaining, would shatter the belief system of any occult ideology.
Guilt and fear, two emotions that can easily destroy a person. you see it reflected in this person’s face, but do you see it reflected in the face of Chavez, Amanie in Iran, and the terrorists at GitMO? No.
Maybe the moral high ground will convince people that committing crimes against the children of humanity is evil. But I am not convinced. I think what convinced Heinrich and the thugs under Hitler to release some of the prisoners at Ravensbruck was the fear, yes the fear, of what the Allies would do to them afterwards. Fear is a powerful motivator.
The people talking about torture not having any effect in getting information, are getting ahead of themselves.
Lulu, I am very familiar with Nazi’s and concentration camps. As a precocious child, I looked forward to seeing “Life Magazine” in the mail, so when at age seven or eight, I opened the famous issue with the breathtaking and mind reeling photos taken at the camps, they became seared into by head. Had my parents seen it first, I doubt they would have left it around for me to see.
It wouldn’t be hyperbole to say those pictures have had the most influence on my life than any other single thing.
I can’t condone Elfriede’s actions nor forgive them, what I’m saying is that at this point in time, there’s nothing to be gained by repatriating this elderly woman except to separate two people who have had a lifetime to work through these issues.
Temper justice with mercy is a theme that runs through all religions even the Koran says Justice is, in a sense, a manifestation of Wrath unless it is tempered by Mercy.
One of the things people say is that Democrats are more merciful. But honestly, what do you think people like the Daily Kos would do to her compared to let’s say, someone like me?
Here’s something that one of those probable Berkley Democrats said.
“It’s so easy to hate her and want to beat her up,” said the employee, who asked that her name not be published. “But we were not there. We don’t know what happened. Why did she marry a Jewish man? Maybe she loved him.
It is so easy to…., what the hell kind of passive voice attempt at passive aggression is that?
It’s hard to see whether someone is sincere with just their quotes on a news article.
He died of a heart attack Jan. 21, 2004, and was buried at the Eternal Home Cemetery in Colma. Elfriede Rinkel planned to be buried beside him, the cemetery said. It’s not clear now whether that will still happen, although under an agreement with the Justice Department, she can be buried on U.S. soil.
I interpret that as meaning her husband is already dead, erp.
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