A Step Too Far.

I read a news report today about a 97-year-old woman in Germany who has been prosecuted for complicity in war crimes. She was a typist in one of the concentration camps apparently, and she was a teenager at the time. The charges were based on the assertion that she must have been fully aware of what she was doing. No doubt she was, but she would have been employed by the Nazi SS, and how should a teenager have responded to orders given by the SS in Nazi Germany?

But of course, I have only the scantiest of information from a brief news report. I don’t know the full details of the story so I’m in no position to judge the validity of the charges.

Nevertheless, it’s evident that this woman’s life is all but over, so why bring her to court now? Is this not one of those situations when reason should prevail and the past be accepted as history? It was nearly eighty years ago after all. Many guilty parties were arraigned and punished in the years following the war, and surely there comes a time when it has to be accepted that enough is enough. I was happy to read that the old lady was given a suspended sentence.

And whether this is relevant I’m not entirely sure, but it did set me wondering again about that most vaguely defined line between justice and revenge.