Vienna, Austria, October 22 – Surviving members of the Nazi Party and SS-run killing squads across Europe voiced displeasure this week over what they called the international community’s double standard in rewarding Hamas with financial aid for attacking Jews while singling out Nazi officials and commanders for war crimes trials for similar actions.
A group of former Einsatzgruppen veterans whose primary task during the Second World War involved forcing Eastern European Jews to dig their own mass graves, line up, and be mowed down by gunfire, joined with former guards at death camps in an open letter to the countries that pledged $5.4 billion in aid to rebuild the Gaza Strip. In the letter, they demanded that those governments show the same monetary support for the veterans’ efforts to murder Jews as their pledges do for Palestinian rocket and guerrilla attacks on Israeli civilians. Alternatively, say the petitioners, the countries should put the Hamas leadership on trial for war crimes, or at the very least withdraw their pledges to show consistency in how they treat those attempting to kill Jews.
Over the summer, Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip fired thousands of rockets at Israeli communities, sparking a punishing response from the IDF that wrought extensive damage on the neighborhoods in which the fighters had concealed their launchers, positions, and arsenals. Dozens of countries pledged reconstruction aid last week to the Palestinian unity government run by the Fatah and Hamas movements without demanding that Hamas be disarmed or abandon its campaign to wipe the Jewish State off the map. In contrast, the tens of billions of dollars in largely American aid provided to war-ravaged West Germany after WWII came only after the Nazi government, ideology, and forces had been thoroughly defeated and disgraced.
“The blatant hypocrisy evident in your governments’ treatment of us and our Nazi colleagues versus that given to the would-be genocide perpetrators of Hamas and their allies cries out for remedy,” says the letter, which was published as an op-ed in eight Austrian, German, Ukrainian, and Hungarian newspapers. “If efforts to kill as many Jews as possible are to be rewarded, then those same countries must immediately provide even greater financial aid to us and other surviving Nazis, whose efforts led to the deaths of far more Jews than Hamas could ever hope to cause.” The letter went on to list various institutions that could be supported if specific Nazis could not be located, such as Jobbik , the far-right, antisemitic Hungarian political party.
Failing that, continued the letter, “the countries involved should show consistent behavior and arrange for the leaders of Hamas to be tried for war crimes, as each rocket launch at civilian areas constitutes one. War crimes charges must also be brought for each instance of military positions placed among civilians. If we and our patriotic German brethren must face trial for our part in killing Jews, then so must Palestinian leaders and fighters stand trial for theirs.”
“If the international community decides not to put those Palestinians to judgment for war crimes, the least they can do is withdraw their pledges to provide reconstruction funds for the Gaza Strip,” the letter goes on. “The double standard in play here is blatant, unprecedented, and painful for those whose friends faced imprisonment or execution for their role in killing Jews.”
An American government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, dismissed the group’s allegations, pointing to the millions of dollars in Social Security benefits that have been paid to Nazis in exchange for agreeing to leave the country and spare the government the spectacle of court proceedings and embarrassing revelations regarding the welcoming attitude the US showed former Nazis in the decades following the war.
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