by Lily Garner

Created on: May 29, 2008

The world is still scarred by the Holocaust. There are people alive today who have survived the horrors of the Concentration Camps, as are there people, of many nationalities, who were once Nazi Generals. It is a period of history that should never be forgotten, a period we should learn from. But that doesn't mean we can't move on.

Over sixty years since Nazi rule over a large part of Europe, anti-German feeling still exists. Sixty years, apparently, isn't enough to heal old wounds, regardless of the fact that the majority of people facing the brunt of this attack had nothing to do with the Nazis. This is not right; if one thing the Nazi's disgusting treatment of the Jews taught us, it should be that we should never let such prejudices affect us again.

After all, are we not using the Germans as a scapegoat, just like Hitler did with the Jews? While we blame Germany for World War II, Hitler blamed the Jewish community for Germany's failure in WWI. We should rise above this petty game; not make ourselves as bad as the Nazis.

And it is the Nazis we should be blaming for this, not Germans. In order to move on, we have to separate the two. Germany is not a Nazi state; it has not been for a very long time. It was Nazi ideology that caused the death of millions of people, not German.

Of course, it could be said that the Germans let this happen, and therefore are just as guilty. And at one time, Nazis did equal Germans. But we have to remember that this wasn't always by choice. Hitler had a fierce grip over the entire of Germany, and other countries, too, and was prepared to kill anyone who got in his way, whether they were German, Jewish, British, French - no one was safe. He even massacred his own army, the SA, when he felt that they were slipping from his control.

In addition, if you go by the "guilty for letting it happen" theory, what about the British, Americans, French, and so on? All people who were in a position to defeat Hitler, but for numerous reasons, opted for appeasement. We only got involved when we ourselves were threatened, showing the same dismissive attitude to the Jewish Community as Hitler did.

Of course, whatever country you are reading this from, your country would undoubtedly have committed the same sort of mass murder that Hitler did at some point in history. Should you be punished? Where do you draw the line at punishment? We can get high and mighty as much as we want, but the tragic fact remains that if it wasn't for our anscestors, entire civilisations wouldn't have been wiped out.

When it comes down to it, every country is guilty for some crime or another against humanity, whether it is regarding the Nazi regime or whether it goes much further back than that. Instead of continuously pointing the finger of blame, surely we should make sure that it never, ever happens again? We have to make sure that every single religion, race and country is safe from this sort of discrimination. And holding every day people responsible for events that occured before they were born is certainly NOT the way to go about this.

Learn more about this author, Lily Garner.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.