THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

the victors at Nuremberg presented, ostensibly at least, justice before death. Yettoday, in retrospect, some basic facts can be questioned. Was the hasty legal processof the Allied powers genuine, or was it biased and contrived? My sense is that theAmericans had some very good reasons to execute prominent Nazis, like sacrificiallambs on the altar of the goddess of justice, and then quickly announce, “Gameover.” They needed to remove the noose from around Germany’s neck quickly, sothat the major European powers would side with them in the new cold war againstJoseph Stalin, World War II’s primary victor. The German rank and file was not reallyde-Nazified. Many who were released from prison returned to their old jobs as ifnothing had happened. Even in 2004, fifty years after the war, the German foreignminister, Joschka Fischer, felt compelled to apologize that Nazi officials had gone onserving in his ministry after the end of the war. The American space program relied onNazi scientists, research and know-how that were once used in the Blitzkrieg againstBritain. Who knows how many contemporary medicines and scientific breakthroughsoriginated in the studies that Nazi researchers did on our brethren, twins,dysfunctional people, mental patients, Gypsies, communists, homosexuals, and thePoles who were helpless in their hands.Did someone instruct the victorious judges to accuse and convict the Nazicelebrities—members of the Gestapo, the SS, and the Nazi party—but spare theThird Reich’s government, the general staff, and the commanders of the Germanarmy, who were also tried but not executed? Did the Allies want to create the falseimpression that the perverse depravity of the Nazis had nothing to do with theGerman state, its institutions, and systems? Is death the appropriate punishment forflesh-and-blood angels of death, or did these men die just so the victors couldconvey the message that the previous chapter was closed even when it hadn’t reallyended?I confess that I am prejudiced. I am uncompromisingly against capital punishmentanywhere. This is because I believe that as a mortal, I cannot play God Almighty. TheGod of the Universe and its Creator—whoever he or she is—is endowed with twomighty powers: creating life and ending life. The Sublime’s ability to create life andinstill a soul in his creations and his ability to slay and destroy are the secrets of hispower. We were created in his image and likeness, but are nothing more than hisshadow.If we cannot give life, we must avoid taking life at all cost. However, even for