2008 Woodie Awards
Deporting woman with Nazi past a mistake
Government ignores current racial problems in favor of punishing past offenders
Khalida Sarwari
Issue date: 10/3/06 Section: Opinion
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Imagine spending 47 years living a comfortable life with a man you love before an unexpected knock on the door one day nine months after his death brings you to confront the sordid past you thought you'd left behind nearly five decades ago.
In other words, imagine being 83-year-old Elfriede Rinkel, a concentration camp guard during the Holocaust. Most of us would rather not. It is unimaginable to consider the double life this woman has led. At the age of 21, she served as a guard at the Ravensbruck women's labor camp in Germany, where she worked with an SS-trained attack dog, and, where eventually 90,000 people perished by the end of WWII. Nine years after the end of the war, Rinkel moved to the Bay Area after being sponsored by her brother and his wife. After settling in San Francisco, Rinkel met her husband, Fred Rinkel, at a German-American club. The couple married in 1962 and was inseparable thereafter, according to the accounts given by their neighbors.
One of the most controversial facets of this story is that her husband, a German-born Jew whose parents perished in the camps, never had the chance to find out the inconvenient truth about his wife's past. After his death in 2004, federal prosecutors paid Rinkel a visit to question her use of attack dogs after matching her personnel card from the Nazi camp to U.S. immigration records. When Rinkel didn't deny the veracity of those artifacts, it was decided early last month that she would be deported back to her native Germany.
The government made the wrong choice in its decision to deport Rinkel. Essentially, by doing so it is helping to perpetuate a never-ending cycle of hate and ignorance. Instead of banishing the problem (in this case, Rinkel), the government should have taken the opportunity to confront it head-on to get to the root of why she did what she did and thus hopefully gain a better understanding of the operations of evil in which she voluntarily worked as a guard. It is a decision that begs the question: What was the point? They sent her back to make a point, but not necessarily a very sensible one. The government's attempt to exemplify that this country has no place for Nazism is a very simple-minded way of looking at the bigger issue-racism and prejudice. Nazism was just another shade of racism. What is the point of eradicating one type of racism and turning a blind eye towards the racism of different shapes and forms that still exists in this country today, albeit more subtle than it was four decades ago?
In other words, imagine being 83-year-old Elfriede Rinkel, a concentration camp guard during the Holocaust. Most of us would rather not. It is unimaginable to consider the double life this woman has led. At the age of 21, she served as a guard at the Ravensbruck women's labor camp in Germany, where she worked with an SS-trained attack dog, and, where eventually 90,000 people perished by the end of WWII. Nine years after the end of the war, Rinkel moved to the Bay Area after being sponsored by her brother and his wife. After settling in San Francisco, Rinkel met her husband, Fred Rinkel, at a German-American club. The couple married in 1962 and was inseparable thereafter, according to the accounts given by their neighbors.
One of the most controversial facets of this story is that her husband, a German-born Jew whose parents perished in the camps, never had the chance to find out the inconvenient truth about his wife's past. After his death in 2004, federal prosecutors paid Rinkel a visit to question her use of attack dogs after matching her personnel card from the Nazi camp to U.S. immigration records. When Rinkel didn't deny the veracity of those artifacts, it was decided early last month that she would be deported back to her native Germany.
The government made the wrong choice in its decision to deport Rinkel. Essentially, by doing so it is helping to perpetuate a never-ending cycle of hate and ignorance. Instead of banishing the problem (in this case, Rinkel), the government should have taken the opportunity to confront it head-on to get to the root of why she did what she did and thus hopefully gain a better understanding of the operations of evil in which she voluntarily worked as a guard. It is a decision that begs the question: What was the point? They sent her back to make a point, but not necessarily a very sensible one. The government's attempt to exemplify that this country has no place for Nazism is a very simple-minded way of looking at the bigger issue-racism and prejudice. Nazism was just another shade of racism. What is the point of eradicating one type of racism and turning a blind eye towards the racism of different shapes and forms that still exists in this country today, albeit more subtle than it was four decades ago?