I had no idea the Jews suffered so much. I had no idea German children had to come to grips with the fact that their fathers were "monsters."

You know who else had a monster for a father? Rahm Emanuel. I wonder when Salon will interview his victims. I wonder when Salon will interivew Rahm, and hear him explain how he felt when he realized that his father was a "monster."

I think the world knows by now the Jews suffered at the hand of the Germans during the Holocaust. We get it. We know. Move on.

Maybe this is a distraction from what is happening in Gaza? Oh, I forgot, Jews are victims. Israel is a sanctuary of innocent victims. That explains old Jewish men throwing rocks at schoolchildren. Or making Palestinian woman give stillbirths in taxis.

Yeah, her father was a monster. Well, there's a hell of a lot of monsters right now in Israel.

Why don't you go there and see? And while you are there, stop by one of their many brothels, and enjoy one of the world's largest white-slavery sex rings. It's all there for you, in the beautiful land of Israel.

Unto the 3rd and 4th generations.

I know someone who is the grand-daughter of Nazis, whose father literally ran feral as a young child in the last days of WWII. The tenor of her early childhood and, by extension, the fabric of her adulthood was really created in events that happened 30 years before she was even conceived. I have to wonder how many other children and grandchildren and greatgrandchildren are still paying for their godawful activities of their parents in that war. In other wars.

Sins of the fathers.

So...Nazi atrocities are documented so therefore we shouldn't pay heed ? Jews aren't perfect either? Is this what Steele is trying to say?

A whole country went mad. They built towns around "factories" that processed human beings, trying to eliminate an entire race of people. I don't know what Rahm Emmanuel's father did, and I'm not justifying what horrors some Israeli's do to Palistinians, but we Need to remember what happened a mere 60+ years ago and stop it wherever it tries to emerge.

You sound like a horrendous, horrendous asshole whose sheer hatred undercuts the 'point' you're trying to make. What's happening in Israel today doesn't invalidate history, you fucking asshole.

I wish the world could 'move on' from rancid assholes like you. Fuck off.

And unfortunately for most, it only takes the right conditions/history and legitimization by the govt/culture to justify it release.

Steele, I think I hear you. Behind the sarcasm and anger, I think your simple message is "I refuse to have empathy for the aging members of one tribe while their descendants are brutalizing the members of another tribe."

What does that get us? When I say "us" I mean Nazis, Jews then, Israelis now, Palestinians, me, you--humans. Humans. All humans.

We were all tortured in the camps; all of us are all being crushed in the occupied territories of Palestine. Humans--no one tribe--have the capacity to torture, to occupy and oppress. There is no point, no percentage, no payoff, no progress in tribal thinking.

The enemy is not "them." The enemy is our failure to practice empathy for fellow humans.

Steele is a pseudo for someone on Salon's masthead.

From generation to generation

There's nothing but stagnation.

Who scored more kills of innocent civilians, Goeth or Bush?

You think the twins have an "unbearable legacy"?

My father was a guard for house demolitions. His job was to make sure that when a family was cleared out of their home because one of their relatives was suspected of resistance to occupation, he was supposed to make sure that no one came back in.

Blowing up houses due to the suspected activities of relatives was routine when he was doing so.

He did that in the uniform of the Israeli army.

They learned a huge whole lot from the goings on in Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, they took rather too much of it as a how-to manual.

Read Avraham Burg's latest book; he's on a book tour in the U.S. right now. He was speaker of the Israeli Knesset, and headed the Jewish Agency. Read what he has to say before you vilify people who call out war criminals.

...nothing from history, and I mean all of it. Maybe it can be explained by the circular rotation of the earth that events repeat and repeat etc etc;

The generational impact of war is conveniently ignored by those who proclaim war as a means to an end, whether it be good or bad. Imagine how many generations of Afghanis have be brutalised by war, particulalrly those who are yet to be born. Consider the number of scarred Iraqis waiting for their chance to seek retribution for the destruction of their country. Many here have mentioned Israel and its cruel, dare I say, fascist tendencies and treatment of Arabs in Palestine. One thing history certainly seems to prove is that the opresssed shall become the opressor, and that retribution is the greatest fuel for violence.

There is also a pecking order in the world when it comes to who represses who which fluxes as situations and circustance alter. This is the warp of history, it is an awful story, it is an inhuman story but it is after all the story of humanity.

Reading this reminded me of those Germans I have met who experienced the war and knew of monsters such as this one mentioned in this article. It always makes me wonder of all the atrocities committed and those who committed them just how mnay were never brought to the light and justice? One thing is for sure in the present world, monsters like this one still exist and monsters like this one will continue to arise because human nature rarely changes over time and throughout history.

What these types do as part of their regullar operating style is pretend at victimhood whilst practicing victimisation. Many in this blog have alerted us of this fact in the world today. Unfortunately these types seem to be a fact of life, but that doesn't mean that their rise to power should not remain under constant surveillance and quashed when necessary. Somehting like this haas recently happened in your country which no doubt is a small step in the right direction.