Reparations for The Holocaust
The Nation of Germany should be assessed damages and reparations made to survivors and or their heirs for the Nazi crimes which included, property theft, wrongful injury and wrongful death. The monetary compensation will never heal the wounds inflicted by the depraved actions of the Nazi on their fellow man. The mere claim that not all Germans participated willingly should not be a viable defense for their liability. Does the concept that the nation should pay for the pain and suffering a few caused seem foreign? Our present day judicial system invokes punitive and actual damages in comparable situations and it should access damages against Germany.
Ford Motor Corporation made a choice to leave their Pinto vulnerable to explosion and fire in a certain type of rear end collision. This conscious decision was made after risk assessment and cost analysis were conducted. The managers concluded that it would be cheaper to settle the lawsuits than reengineer the vehicle. Not every employee of Ford nor every stockholder participated in the decision. Nevertheless, the company as a whole was responsible. The fateful decision to place their cost base ahead of human life was considerably more expensive than they estimated. Numerous people lost their life to Ford's profits before the problem was rectified. Even in this modern example, the human life was not spared until the courts assessed damages for the deaths caused by Ford.
The German population has criminal guilt because of a number of reasons. Hitler was a freely elected leader promising to restore Germany to the greatness it enjoyed prior to World War One. Hitler and his henchmen could not have achieved their repugnant goals for the Master Race with...
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"Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." United Nations General Assembly.
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Cook, Susan. "Welcome to the Cambodian Genocide Program." . (2000.) February 11, 2001.
Swiss Bankers Association. . (February 2001.) February 11, 2001.
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"Excerpts from Testimonies of SS Men." . February 11, 2001.
Matthews, Roy, and Dewitt Platt. "Revolutions in Scientific and Political Thought." The Western Humanities. Mountianview California: Mayfeild Publishing Company 2001. Page 415.
United States Embassy. "Report on Looted Gold and German Assets." . (June 02,1998.) February 12, 2001.
"The Book of Joshua." The New American Bible. Pope Paul. Huntington, Indiana:
Our Sunday Visitor Incorporated. July 27, 1970. Chapter 6, verse 18 to 21.
During World War II, many German soldiers killed thousands of innocent lives, especially Jewish. However, not all lives lost during World War II, and the Holocaust be accounted for by German soldiers, and the mobile killing task force, Einsatzgruppen, but citizens themselves. In the book, Neighbors by Jan Gross, studies a Polish town called Jedwabne during World War II. The book provides evidence on a mass killing on July 10, 1941, by Polish citizens. The Polish citizens murdered roughly 350 victims, Jewish, in Jedwabne. This evidence brought to light by the author shows not all Germans were accountable for all the mass murders during the time period.
I believe that the majority of the German people as a whole were guilty for the Holocaust. Ideally, during the Second World War (WWII) the huge majority of citizens in Germany as well as the overpowered European states took no risks. They were spectators, attempting to get going with their living the best they could. However, they failed protest against Nazi domination or endanger their welfare attempting to overcome their novel rulers by assisting the person in need. Nevertheless, after the end of WWII, many asserted not to have recognized the right nature of Nazi maltreatments as well as the Holocaust. Or they asserted that they were just being directed (Rensmann 170). This is
Siegel, Scott J., On-line article, In Defense of the German Civilian Population on Charges of Willing Accomplices to Crimes Against Humanity During WW II. Location: http://members.tripod.com/~ssscott/defense.html.
The German economy complicated the Nazis’ financial situation because of events that happened before the Holocaust. Due to the poor condition of the economy, the funds made traced back to the Jews, causing more disagreements to arise. The Treaty of Versailles from World War I said, “…Germany undertakes that she will make compensation for all damage done to the civilian population…and their property…” which caused Germany to be in debt (Duffy). To compensate, the government resorted to getting the money from their citizens, but the Jewish had to pay special taxes. This produced injustice among the citizens and protesting, but the government executed or punished those who protested. Before the Holocaust, the German economy was in ruins from World War I and Hitler blamed the Jews for it (“Holocaust” 296). Hitler onl...
Scheffer, David J. "Responding To Genocide And Crimes Against Humanity." U.S. Department Of State Dispatch 9.4 (1998): 20. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. .
By looking at The Dog in the Wood, we can see that the treatment of Germans after World War II was unfair. The people of Germany after the war were beaten, stolen from, raped, put in refugee camps, and were forced to deal with many other hardships. They had to learn to deal with the consequences presented before them, so they could retain their culture. This is important because an entire way of life was being torn apart and was being replaced against the peoples’ will.
Even if a suspected Nazi were to be found alive and tried, it would be difficult to come to a conviction. After seventy years, virtually all eyewitnesses have passed away, and most of the documentation destroyed or lost. Additionally, proving that an individual was guilty of a greater crime would be nearly impossible. It is safe to assume that those still alive would have been in their early 20’s during the war and had only been simple guards and low ranking officers, likely guilty of no greater crime. Considering all of these facts, it can be concluded that of the 4,000 names available, a fraction of them can be located, a fraction of those are still alive, and an even smaller fraction deserves to be tried. However, there are some who believe that those affiliated with the third reich in any way should continue to be hunted down. Those who desire most for the Nazi’s to face justice are the survivors of the holocaust. Martin Greenfield describes how he vowed to, “return and kill the [Nazi’s] wife”, after he escaped. This evidence of hatred, among the countless other cases, show the rightful feelings the
Lastly, I know we study the Holocaust to make sure something like it never happens agian. Think of the Nuremburg race trails, which exsisted soley to put those awful people to justice, I remember a story, of a man who escaped before the trails and lived here in America, for 70 years, he was 90 when he was caught. But did they let him go for his age? No, because in no way was what he did okay, and he had to be put to justice. He was put on trail and sent to jail, where he died. That was honest justice, and its right.
... thing to say if you lived in Germany that the Nazis have done the right thing killing millions of people for what just to show that they didn’t cause World War I. Even if they did not cause World War I they sure did help by causing World War II which everyone is lucky that it was not as bad as it could have been. The Nazis targeted innocent people that had nothing to do with anything that caused World War I but the Nazis were the judge, jury, and executioner for all the people they took into their concentration camp. Even if some how any of the people they took into their camps were horrible people or did cause World War I. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Which everything the Nazis have done to the people in those camps was wrong. Treating the people like they were animals killing them for fun is horrible to do to people who were going to die from starvation anyway.
Henry, John. (2001). The scientific revolution and the origins of modern science. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Publishing
Shapere, D. (1964). Review: The structure of Scientific Revolutions. The Philosophical Review , 73 (3), 383-394.
Eighteenth Century Europe was in turmoil, “characterized by dramatic revolutions in science, philosophy, society and politics” (Bristow, 2011, para. 1). Revolution was afoot in France, while earlier scientific discoveries from Copernicus to Newton drastically changed how humans understood the world. Empiricism and Skepticism rose with modern science to challenge the prevailing Rationalism (Murphy, 2010).
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), G.A. res. 217A (III), U.N. Doc A/810 at 71.
There was strong competition for Ford in the American small-car market from Volkswagen and several Japanese companies in the 1960’s. To fight the competition, Ford rushed its newest car the Pinto into production in much less time than is usually required to develop a car. The regular time to produce an automobile is 43 months but Ford took 25 months only (Satchi, L., 2005). Although Ford had access to a new design which would decrease the possibility of the Ford Pinto from exploding, the company chose not to implement the design, which would have cost $11 per car, even though it had done an analysis showing that the new design would result in 180 less deaths. The company defended itself on the grounds that it used the accepted risk-benefit analysis to determine if the monetary costs of making the change were greater than the societal benefit. Based on the numbers Ford used, the cost would have been $137 million versus the $49.5 million price tag put on the deaths, injuries, and car damages, and thus Ford felt justified not implementing the design change (Legget, C., 1999). This was a ground breaking decision because it failed to use the common standard of whether a harm was a result of an action on trespass or harm as a result of an action on the case (Ferguson, A., 2005).
"The Spoils of Berlin." New African Feb. 2010: 18-33. New African. Web. 9 Mar. 2011. .