by Doug Clore

Created on: February 09, 2010   Last Updated: February 10, 2010

The Holocaust exacted a horrible price from nearly every Jewish family in Europe in the mid twentieth century, and that price is being paid generation after generation as they struggle with a nightmare past that can never be repaid, no matter how much restitution the Germans are asked to pay.   To wonder if your grandfather was skinned alive to provide a human lampshade for a German officer who may have been the rapist who tormented your grandmother every day is not something that will go away if we can just determine the correct generation and make them pay. 

To wonder why people all over the world,  but mostly in Germany,  stood by and watched them being treated this way without doing anything to help has certainly left a scar on the national psyche of the Jewish people,  and one has to wonder why the people of Germany are not more willing to attempt to erase the mind numbingly evil  stain left by their ancestors.   To have their fortunes stripped from them,  their homes taken , their businesses destroyed,  this has had,  and will continue to have,   an  extra-generational impact. 

Why should not Jewish  victims of German brutality be compensated?  If they are not compensated,  do they not once again become victims of Germans who would now say "sorry,  not our fault"?    No matter what the Germans do or do not do,  Jews will continue to suffer,  through no fault of today's Jewish people or of their ancestors.   Whatever small difference reparations can make, should be accomplished.  Would you have the Jews pay once again  for the murderous rape of a nation, actions which nearly drove them to extinction?  Would you have them absorb the loss of their homes,  land, businesses and heritage while the Germans who cause it skate freely and merrily along their way?

  It is clear that one or the other is going to suffer.  Will it be the Germans who stole the land and homes  of the Jews and absorbed the gain into their own economy,  or will it once again be the Jews?  Which sounds more fair to you?

  It is unconscionable to allow Germany's economy to have gained anything by the thieving rape and murder of a people.  In the future, no country should be able to look at Germany as an example of a nation that was allowed to  advance itself by choosing a particular ethnic group living among them and exterminate  them like rats.    

Learn more about this author, Doug Clore.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.