Coincidental Irony

"...That we must never forgive would seem to follow from the same stern logic. For if we forgive, it will be a sign to those in the future that they can act without fear of punishment, and that the world has a moral escape valve labeled 'forgiveness' that permits evil not only to survive but to thrive...Forgiveness becomes a 'weak' virtue, one that Christians seem particularly prone to champion, and one that always carries the possibility of condoning, rather than constricting, the spread of evil." -Robert McAfee Brown

"Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews....If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they're being gassed." - Anne Frank

"'Do you see that chimney over there? See it? Do you see those flames? (Yes, we did see the flames.) Over there-that's where you're going to be taken. That's your grave, over there.' ...Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never." -Elie Weisel in Night (Chapter 3, pg. 32)

"When I came to power, I did not want the concentration camps to become old age pensioners homes, but instruments of terror." - Adolf Hitler

"The world must know what happened, and never forget." - General Eisenhower, while visiting Nazi death camps, 1945.

"A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased" - Hans Frank, the Nazi governor of Poland.


I am not sure it is appropriate (and it wasn't my intention) to use simplistic ideas about the Golden Rule to address the incomprehensible horror of the Holocaust. And I am not sure if I understand your post. Are you taking the side of a Nazi war criminal?

Those posts just happened to end up next to each other on the page. I think about many different things that happen to be VERY different from one another. This simple coincidence would have been defeated had someone else posted between the times of my two posts. There was no connection between those posts.

I will be the first to say that anyone who can unquestionably forgive a Nazi prison guard (in the spirit of my post: like a school boy forgiving his friend for mistreating him on the playground) is a better wo/man than I.

Exercising the Golden Rule in our daily lives (i.e. my post) and exercising it in reference to the Holocaust is like comparing a bicycle to a diesel truck.

Any look into the Nazi regime (i.e. Hermann Goering, Alfred Speer, Rudolf Hess, Henrich Himmler, Josef Goebbles, and Hitler himself) conjures feelings of such disgust that the summation of all kindergarten lessons taught about the Golden Rule would not suffice in addressing what happened.

As for your ideas about his motives--they are just that--ideas. Either of us would be only speculating as to what he actually did or how he felt about it. You may be right, he may be ashamed. Or it could be quite the opposite.

Going with the numerous accounts that I have read, footage I have viewed, and the crown jewel--my trip to the Holocaust museum in DC... I would say that the odds are against him being "a good father and husband" who "take[s] care of the family he loves."

Nazis haven't been great family men. According to William Shirer in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" Nazis were thugs from the beginning. Josef Goebbles murdered his five children and wife because he couldn't fathom them living in a country without socialism (though Nazi socialism wasn't TRUE socialism.) An unforgettable portrayal of this is seen in Downfall (an academy award-nominated German film.)

The followers of the Nazi regime (notably the Wehrmacht) were gradually brought on board gradually. Himmler (founder of the Waffen-SS and Einsatzgruppen who were extermination squads) had to know that his thugs were devoted. Extensive conditioning was necessary. (pg 69, Masters of Death, Richard Rhodes). They were taught these things...slowly internalizing radical anti-semitism and unrestrained brutality.

This was not a spur of the moment thing. This was not shoplifting or a bar fight. These were calculated, deliberate emotions and actions. Elie Weisel tells of Nazi prison guards tossing Jewish babies into the air for machine gun target practice.

Any doubt of their unrepentant, arrogant behavior can be evidenced in virtually any account of the Nuremburg trials where the Nazis were put on trial. They all plead not guilty...despite the irrefutable evidence.

I met a woman from Germany whose family was killed during the Holocaust. I think she would cringe at any attempt to excuse, sympathize or trivialize the Nazis' unthinkable acts. I tend to react in the same way.

I think the extent of the dignity of the Nazis can be summed up in the way their leader Hitler ended up. He bit down on a poison pill, shot himself in the head, and then had his assistants torch his body in the back of his bunker with gasoline.

By the way, the included photo is from Mauthausen, where this Johann Leprich worked.