Even waning on sixty years from the horrific events of the holocaust, those associated with it are forever tainted, no matter their level of involvement or personal responsibility. Germans alive during this regime have had to bear the stigma of association with the most evil ideology ever carried out: the systematic and calculated eradication of a entire religion from Europe. For those who were the lowest on the totem pole, the grunts, the foot soldiers, the guards, they have had to bear this burden as greatly as those who orchestrated the events that led to the murder of millions.

Elfriede Lina Rinkel was a concentration camp guard in Ravensbruck, north of Berlin, from June of 1944 to the spring of 1945 when it was abandoned as the Russians sieged the capital. The now 84 year-old woman came to San Francisco in 1959, concealing her past work history. Her sister-in-law, who along with Elfriede Rinkel’s brother, had sponsored her immigration, said that Elfriede Huth (her maiden name) met her husband, Fred Rinkel, decades ago at a German-American Club in San Francisco. San Jose Mercury News continues:

Rinkel’s husband died in January 2004; his obituary said he was a longtime member of the Jewish service organization B’nai B’rith, and his funeral services were held at a Jewish memorial chapel. The couple had planned to be buried side by side in a Jewish cemetery in Colma. Rinkel’s sister-in-law said Rinkel’s brother had never learned of his sister’s wartime activity because he had been captured by U.S. troops while fighting for the German army in North Africa.

Even as Rinkel’s relatives were helping her to pack up her apartment on Bush Street, two blocks up Nob Hill from Union Square, they said they still knew nothing of her past.

“Never a word about why she was leaving,” Rinkel’s sister-in-law said. “She said she just wanted to go back to Germany, and because she told us that, we believed her.”

Rinkel was discovered after investigators compared Ravensbrück guard rosters with U.S. immigration documents — some 70,000 names have been studied since the Office of Special Investigations opened in 1979 — and stumbled upon her maiden name.

She admitted being assigned to the camp, explaining that she had had a less desirable job as a factory worker and then volunteered to be a dog handler at the camp for better wages.

But she insisted she never used her dog as a weapon against the prisoners, never forced them into marches every morning to work or to die. She said never joined the Nazi Party, just did its bidding, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Dixon, her San Francisco attorney, told the Los Angeles Times that it was all just too long ago. She said her client had tried to remake her life and never thought she would be tripped up so late in her years.

“She was trying to atone for actions in the past,” Dixon said. “She married a Jewish man, and she gave to Jewish charities.”

Only in death can Rinkel return to the United States. However, before she left, she sold her plot in Colma’s Eternal Home Cemetery — giving up the double gravestone with the Star of David above the couple’s names.

The question now is, should the U.S. have deported Rinkel? Under law it is necessary to do so, as the U.S. complies with a an agreement not to harbour any former members of the Nazi regime, but does Rinkel qualify as a real Nazi, or merely a soldier following orders? She says she was only a perimeter guard, but surely she had seen some horrific events, and knew with certainty of what occurred there. That she saw the liquidation of thousands of Jews is undeniable. What is under debate is whether she has indeed “atoned” for the crime of association with history’s most murderous and notorious regime.

That Rinkel did try to reconcile her past is clear. She married a Jewish man who had himself fled the holocaust. She had many Jewish friends, was involved in the community, and planned to in fact be buried in a Jewish cemetary alongside her husband. But is it enough, or can anything be enough, for that matter, when it comes to the Nazi’s? Rinkel now faces the end of her life in a Germany that has changed much since 1959. But does she belong there? No charges are being laid to her in Germany. Does she do more good in Germany where she is alone? Or could she, perhaps, have continued to make her lifelong atonement by remaining present in the Jewish community, and demonstrating that her involvement with the Nazis was not a representation of her moral character, but more a struggle for her own survival in a country starved and burned by war?

Such questions are almost rhetorical, but each person has a different opinion. What is yours?