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I know as well as anyone how young easily young people can be convinced to whole heartedly support a war, and in a totalitarian regime like the one Hitler ran they often don't have much choice. I think we need to understand the indoctrination that went on with organizations like the "Hitler Youth which even the current Pope was once a member of. I just read an article about a man who for years lived in a retirement community in my hometown of Mesa, Arizona, who has now returned to Germany after being discovered as a former SS soldier and guard at Sachenhausen one of the lesser known Nazi death camps. By lesser known I mean compared with Au switch which many of us are more likely to have heard of because of people like Corrie Ten Boom, author of The Hiding Place, who told us of their experiences there. I might add that Miss Ten Boom, as a Christian woman felt the need to forgive a man she recognized years later as one of the guards that tortured her in the camps, and to tell personally make peace with him so he would know she forgave him. Although as a Christian myself I acknowledge that the need for personal forgiveness does not mean a man should not face legal penalties for his crimes, but what if he knew that if he did not do it, someone else would? I don't have too many details on Martin Hartman's personal choices as he surveyed what went on in these camps, or his thoughts and feelings, but I can imagine it must be a very difficult decision to be faced with as far as how one might react to being in that type of situation. I would like to think that I would be helping people escape, or that I would lead some sort of revolt or rebellion, but the fact is that if such a thing was highly likely to succeed in Nazi Germany, Hitler would not have had so much support in the first place. I know that if we ever go that far towards totalitarianism, which is bound to happen eventually if we don't start electing leaders who love the freedom this country was designed to protect, I will be involved in open rebellions against the tyranny, but my father is older and possibly wiser and he does not subscribe to the philosophy of "I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees." Although with the condition of his knees he wouldn't be any more comfortable on them than I would on mine. I understand that at 88 years old this man's life is near its end anyway, and I did not know him personally, in fact had never heard of him until I read this article, Mesa being a large city and having never visited the community known as leisure world although I passed it often. My pleas for compassion and forgiveness are not just for this man but also for those who commit similar war crimes in other times. Such as Abu Graib, where there was a similar feeling of hatred for a perceived enemy, or among the soldiers of Iraq that are forced to kill women and children on occasion knowing that the enemy is not above using them as suicide bombers and therefore they are ordered to keep them at a distance form military bases at all costs. War in general involves a lot of atrocity, and often in order to keep from total despair and insanity soldiers trick themselves into thinking they actually like what they are doing, only to be haunted by it later in life if they survive long enough. Let us think on that for a moment as a man who has lead a peaceful life over half a century, a naturalized citizen of his country, flees justice at the hands of a war crimes tribunal for following orders 63 years ago.

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