The unspeakable crime of the 20th century, more than the triumph of evil, was the sin of the innocent bystander. For years our efforts to understand the Holocaust focused on the perpetrators. We looked for explanations for the madness of Mengele, the obsessive hatred of Hitler, the impassive cruelty of Eichmann. We sought answers to how it was possible for the criminal elements, the sadists and the mentally unbalanced to achieve the kind of power that made the mass killings feasible. That was because we had no idea of the real extent of the horror. With more than 42,000 ghettos and concentration camps scattered throughout the length and breadth of a supposedly civilized continent, theres no longer any way to avoid the obvious conclusion. The cultured, the educated, the enlightened, the liberal, the refined, the sophisticated, the urbane - all of them share in the shame of a world that lost its moral compass and willingly acceded to the victory of evil. We had no idea what was happening needs to be clearly identified as the great lie of the years of Nazi power. The harsh truth is that almost everyone had to know. The numbers negate the possibility for collective ignorance. And still the killings did not stop, the torture did not cease, the concentration camps were not closed, the crematoria continued their barbaric task. The decent people were somehow able to rationalize their silence
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 07:32:20 +0000