LONDON -- Recent ceremonies at Auschwitz to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation by Russian forces of Nazi Germany's main death camp have rightly made us think about man's inhumanity to man and ponder how such horrific acts could have taken place. The Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish race led to the murder of an estimated 6 million people, many of them women and children. The Holocaust must always be remembered as a warning to mankind of the dangers stemming from racial prejudice and a bigoted ideology.
At Auschwitz, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder declared that the memories belong to Germany's national identity. Even if the majority of Germans now alive bear no personal guilt for the holocaust, he said, "the evil of Nazi ideology did not come out of nowhere. The brutalization of thought and the lack of moral inhibition had a history. One thing is clear: The Nazi ideology was willed by people and carried out by people."
Peoples and their leaders must share the blame. Politicians and bureaucrats in German-occupied territories cooperated in the arrest of Jews and others. Britain and America could and should have done more before the war to admit Jewish refugees. The Vatican seems to have turned a blind eye to what was going on.