I was a huge admirer of Simon Wiesenthal, who died yesterday aged 96. By many accounts he was obsessed with his mission - to bring Nazi war criminals to account - but then we need obsessives in this world. Obsessives keep up the fight when everyone else has moved on.
We need to move on from the horrors of history if we are to evolve as human beings. There's a place for reconciliation, if only so there's a place to move onto. But there's a place for justice as well. We need people to say 'you may be old men now, but you are still accountable for your actions'. We need to keep caring about it, because atoning for the past is an important part of the future. And the present. There are abuses perpetrated daily by people who feel they are holders of power, so will never have to confront the survivors of those abuses.
And I admired Simon Wiesenthal for keeping on keeping on. Only a man who'd survived it could have done it, and many of those who'd survived it could think of nothing worse than devoting their lives to reliving it. I have never known any of my Jewish family Mention The War, but I know from lopsided family trees that many never survived it.
As the BBC obituary puts it:
... his dogged perseverance in hunting down those who had colluded in the most
barbarous of crimes made him a legend in his lifetime. He always claimed he sought justice not vengeance.
"I might forgive them for myself," he once said, "but I couldn't speak for the millions they killed."
joella
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