"A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased."
----Hans Frank, Germany's Governor General of Poland, before he was hanged at Nuremberg

I say this as an American of German descent, who is largely proud of his German history. But in this case, let the punishment fit the crime !

I've dated three women who immigrated to Germany, before coming to the U.S.
Two were Polish, and one Iranian. All quite beautiful. All said that it was the most cold and racist place they've ever lived, and they were treated, more than anywhere else they've lived, "like foreigners".

I've also seen several articles about attacks on immigrants to Germany as well, beyond these personal accounts.

I once met a man named Charlupsky, a former Polish Jew who immigrated to the U.S. after the war with his wife. Both he and his wife had survived Auschwitz.
We had a conversation one day about WW II, and I was unaware at that point of his past. And just very casually and calmly in a matter-of-fact way, he rolled up his sleeve and showed me the Nazi-imprinted numbers tattooed on his arm. He said he and his wife had survived Auschwitz.
I've seen a lot of documentaries, about how the burned ashes dispersed in the fields surrounding Auschwitz elevated the ground six feet, I've seen footage of bulldozers pushing a panorama of emaciated naked corpses into a mass grave. But nothing struck me with more horror about these events than this amiable 70-year old man standing right in front of me with the numbers tattooed on his arm.

So I know in some ways it seems disproportionate, but from the examples I just gave. No, I don't think the message has fully sunk in.

Yours is the only country in Europe that actually tried to protect its Jews, and didn't eagerly hand them over to the Germans.

And many Jews who tried to return to their native towns, post-war, were driven out, or killed by the local population, NOT the Germans.
Hence the need for a Jewish homeland in Israel, in 1948.

~

On a different issue, Chant, how do you feel about France selling a nuclear reactor to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, that the Israelis bombed to the ground in 1981 ?

And how do you feel about Russia selling reactors to Iran, that the Iranians, it seems quite clear, are attempting to use to create weapons grade plutonium?

How do you feel about a nuclear armed North Korea?

Or a Libya that almost went nuclear, before they chose to submit to U.N. dismantlement of it in recent weeks?

Does it alarm you that these fanatical regimes have or are/were on the brink of obtaining nukes ? It seems that Europeans are suicidally indifferent to this, while Americans are very concerned.
Which is extremely odd to me, since Europeans are within much closer missile range to these rogue countries.

And how do you feel that it is EUROPEAN states that are providing this capability to fanatical and fundamentalist/extremist states?
It seems to me that countries like France and Russia lose all credibility as diplomatically "responsible" nations when they so carelessly hand out this technology to rogue nations.


And I'm mystified what the logic is, that Europeans have no problem with these nuclear transactions, but have a huge problem with U.S. removal of a regime that has a long checklist of evil beyond WMD's, 12 years of U.N. defiance, and that the world is unquestionably a better place without.

It just makes no sense to me.

~

Oh, and here's a discussion from PBS News Hour last night, of David Kay's Senate Hearing, by two senators on the committee, Senator Levin, and Senator McCain. The transcript has some glaring and really stupid typos, but the meaning is still clear enough:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june04/weapons_1-28.html

The most powerful statement by McCain is badly distorted by typos, and in the broadcast version said:

Quote:



MARGARET WARNER: Senator McCain, do you see evidence of exaggeration or manipulation?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I do not. President Clinton in 1998 stated unequivocally that we needed a regime change, because of Saddam Hussein's continued pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Nor do I believe this president of the United States, or vice president would either.

This is a serious charge and I categorically reject it. Yes, I believe that mistakes were made and yes we need to have a review of it, but somehow to believe that two administrations intentionally misled the American people, I think is a leap of imagination that I cannot take nor do I believe the majority of the American people would ... the majority of the American people are glad that the country[the U.S.], Iraq, and the world, is rid of Saddam Hussein.