[trte9343r4]

> it was just one person

There was similar case with another SS member in Canadian Parliament a few decades ago.

> was Waffen-SS, not SS -- and yes, there's a major difference between the two.

Poland asked for his extradition. They seems to have different opinion.

From wiki:

Elements of the Waffen-SS Galizien worked alongside one of the most brutal units of Nazi Germany, the SS-Sonderbattalion Dirlewanger,[119] which had carried out brutal anti-partisan activities in Belarus and Poland, and had taken part in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.[123] The Waffen-SS Galizien destroyed several Polish communities in western Ukraine during the winter and spring of 1944.[124] Specifically, the 4th and 5th SS Police Regiments have been accused of murdering Polish civilians in the course of anti-guerilla activity.

[aguaviva]

Of course they were also bad and on the wrong side, and all that.

But the distinction is nonetheless very significant, for obvious reasons -- and the fact of Poland having considered such an action doesn't change this fact.

It may also be driving the fact nothing seems to have come of the internal extradition effort so far. In particular, there's no sign that Poland has actually asked for extradition, only that they were publicly considering it in the aftermath of the scandal.

And that in turn -- could likely be because the sole fact of his being a member of that division (given how its status was decided at Nuremburg) does not present them with sufficient grounds to do so (absent any other signs of criminality). Being as, unlike other Waffen-SS divisions, foreign-born divisions such as his were specifically exempt from the additional criminal charge of being "an integral part of the SS" that the native-born divisions were. That's because legally and administratively they weren't (nor were its recruits subject to SS or even NS indoctrination, for the most part).

They were also intrinsically less involved in the Final Solution, unlike the regular Waffen-SS, by and large (in particular they were not involved operating the camps, nor did they contribute to units of the Einsatzgruppen).

This is why one can't just use the labels "SS", "Waffen-SS" interchangeably.

Or assume that the latter is simply a subset of the former.

BTW this isn't about nitpicking. It's very, very important to understand that one of the main reasons the Final Solution was so successful was that it didn't require all of its willing helpers to be fanatical, drooling Nazis (or even to care at all about its ideology or aims, let alone be members of its registered organizations).

By and large they were regular folks, "fighting for their country" or so they believed. Or doing what they thought they had to do to survive.

[trte9343r4]

Waffen SS was not part of regular army (Wehrmacht), like you are trying to whitewash. From wiki: "the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the German Nazi party".

It was separate army, directly under Nazi party. Many members were German. They have different weapons, their own logistics, separate chain of command and so on.

> They were also intrinsically less involved in the Final Solution, unlike the regular Waffen-SS, by and large (in particular they were not involved operating the camps,

There were atrocities outside of West Europe as well.