Sad Chapter Closed too Late for Many

Reuters reported last week - Germany wrapped up one aspect of its Nazi past on Tuesday by shutting down a forced labor fund that paid out more than 4.37 billion euros to 1.7 million elderly victims of the Hitler era around the world....

So, a price has been set on the value of human dignity and restraint from freedom and liberty. 2500 EU for those enslaved laborers during Nazi occupation of Poland. This story of retribution I have followed for more than 5 years, and my heart bled each passing day as another few hundred survivors pass on without seeing one cent of compensation.

Justice delayed is justice denied (W. E. Gladstone).

Atrocities committed by the Germans during the war were not only criminal, but also exacted a "cost" to humanity, which centers more with civil law. When liability cannot be paid out in currency, usually the remedy at law is attachments of assets and property.

Conquered nations and those that lost at war have through the millennia paid the price. Attachments of German government assets should have been the avenue of swift payment to the victims of Nazi inhumanity even before the turn of 20th mid-century.

Now we are quelling some German's claim to lost lands affected by the post war border shift in the west of Poland devised at Potsdam.

I do not believe the sins of the father should be visited on the son. Justice delayed is truly justice denied. The lack of addressing this compensation issue in a more timely fashion was deplorable. Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, of course, plays into the equation ;however, I take no comfort in Aeschylus' observation, "Justice turns the scale, bringing to some learning through suffering."

I do believe there is a price to pay for atrocities, but 2500 EU on average, years too late and for too few cheapens the existence of man. Go after the Stalinists if they still exist. But, to extract petty change from them too would further devalue the priceless grace of man.