The atrocities brought about by war are difficult to forget; ask those who have served in the Armed Forces about the horrors that they have witnessed as part and parcel of war, and they will probably simply say that what they have seen is indescribable.
The Navy SEALs per se were not yet around during the Second World War, but their predecessors — from the Naval Combat Demolition Unit to the UDT Frogmen — were, and they know first hand about the horrors of the concentration camps in Europe. It has been all of seventy years – practically an entire lifetime – and yet it seems that some wounds will never heal.
The “big fish” have been tried at Nuremberg – at least those who survived what one can only hope is the carnage of their own conscience. And yet for some, justice has still not been served.
An 89 year-old former Nazi guard, John Demjanjuk, was reportedly wheeled into a German court today. He had immigrated to the United States in 1951, but has since been extradited in order to be tried for crimes committed during the war.
Demjanjuk reportedly had a hand in the murder of 28,000 Jews, having been a guard at the Sobibor death camp. He was reportedly born in the Ukraine and fought in the Red Army. He was eventually captured by the Nazis and recruited as a camp guard. He had been previously brought to trial in Israel for crimes against humanity where he was sentenced to death; that conviction was overturned, though, when it was eventually ruled that he was not the guard in question, according to a feature on Time.com. If convicted, he stands to face 15 years in a German prison.
Even as a child, we have followed through the story of the Jewish people and their being the unjust and unreasonable target for annihilation during the Second World War. Regardless of whether one lived or survived, the stigma and the pain that every Jew of the era had to suffer through must have been insurmountable to anyone of us who did not have to go through what they had.
But then again, is this trial still necessary? Is justice not better served by taking the lessons learned from the horrors of war to heart over prosecuting an 89 year-old who, for all intents and purposes, may be nearing the end of his days anyway? Old wounds, when allowed to fester, will only lead to new ones – and it will all just be a cycle that we would probably be better off putting an end to.
We do believe, though, that something like the persecution of Jews in World War II should never be allowed to happen again. Ever.
February 21st, 2010 - 9:19 am
The determination of what exactly the man did needs to be thoroughly debated in court. This is my opinion. It may be wrong. The cost is high. I am not even sure the man is guilty of anything other than taking orders like any other Axis stooge, not that that is an excuse. I think the court’s value here is in the discovery and debate process.
From what I have read about the War Crimes issues emerging after WWII, is that a number of scenarios were suggested:
The British (Churchill) wanted to line up all SS officers and shoot them and to reduce Germany to a pastoral economy with no technological expertise (no universities, etc)
The Jews wanted total revenge. All SS, Officers and troups, (what we Americans would refer to as enlisted men) and all members of the Nazi Party should be executed.
Truman would have non of this. He wanted to develop a precise historical record, to be investigated, sicovered and judicated by an agreed upon (by the Allies and significant survivors) process.
I think he was right.
It could have been worse for many of those who merely smiled at the Nazis.