Never forget.

Editor,

What frustrates me about this case is that so many atrocities occurring in the present -- because they only involve torture that doesn't kill, or they only kill a few or only a few dozen civilians in a fit of rage, or because the killing is not the purpose of policy but incidental to it, or the scale of the killing does not rise to scale of the systematic execution of the Holocaust -- are not prosecuted, the leaders responsible are not prosecuted, and the society that condones that leadership is not prosecuted.

The Holocaust was an unimaginable horror, as was every facet of totalitarian aggression, but the lessons are in the present and for the the present: when fascist scapegoating begins the next time, someone other than Jews might be the target; when crowds are whipped into an attitude of national superiority, ideology swallows individuals and violence overwhelms democracy; when the business of the state is war and the business of industry is destruction, all of humanity is imperiled.

One frail old man who enjoyed killing helpless Jews when he was in his prime does not seem to be an adequate target to protect humanity from the sort of paroxysms that might have destroyed us all in the 20th century and still might now or in the future. Let the guy go? That doesn't seem right. But that the crimes of this small man manage to overshadow the crimes we are all enveloped in today does not feel right to me.

re: "Man Tied to Death Camp Goes on Trial in Germany" (12/01/2009)