Politics 2.0

AN UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH

A suspected Nazi death camp guard has been accused of helping to kill nearly 28,000 Jews in World War Two, according to Sky News on Monday 13 July 2009.

"State prosecutors in Munich have charged the 89-year-old John Demjanjuk as an accessory to murder in a total of 27,900 cases," prosecutors said.

The suspect, who has been held in a jail in southern Germany since May 12 after he was deported from the United States, will be tried at a court in Munich. The report on Sky's website triggered much debate in its comments section on whether the 89 year old should stand trial. It also revealed people's feelings of forgetting the past of an 89 year old man who was "following orders" when we compare that to American soldiers following orders today in Iraq and the like.

It is interesting to see how the topic of the Holocaust makes people feel awkward and uneasy. It leads to a natural reaction of distancing oneself or denial. Some try to under-state it to make it less applicable to their lives.

The fact that Jews were marched to gas chambers in a mass assembly like a killing factory is the darkest chapter of modern history. If people feel uncomfortable about it today, or try to downplay it, then the shame of the previous generations continues with them. 6 million Jews died, not as POW's or collaterals but as musicians and teachers.