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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...ering again. When the news got out about the events of the Holocaust most Germans claimed they where vaguely aware about the death camps. Claiming they where misinformed about the camps, but Hitler had a 93% vote for his actions by Germany. These actions didn’t go unnoticed after all had settled after WWII the search for German officers to be charged with war crimes had started the people didn’t want the actions of the people who tortured, killed, and slaughtered them to walk away free. Many of the German SS officers where arrested for war crimes and sentenced but few escaped. In my opinion Hitler made the Jewish people stronger they ended up conquering and moving past this hard time. There are many holocaust museums and monuments symbolizing what the Jews and other people went through. In my mind the holocaust has to be the most brutal and vile event in history.
Jaspers, Karl. The Question of German Guilt. Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: The Dial P, 1947.
After World War II, the people of Germany endured torment from their conquerors in many forms, from being stolen from, to be tortured or killed. Over ten million Germans were forced to move out of their homes. Around half a million of those that were moved died on their journeys elsewhere, while others suffered greatly from famine, cold, and dehydration (Douglas). At a number this large, surely some of the people that lived in Germany were against the war. This begs the question: Why should all of the people of Germany suffer because of Hitler’s wrongdoings? Every day, German citizens were pushed off land that had belonged to them, regardless of their position on the war.
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
The holocaust was a horrible and unthinkable event in history. It was instigated by one cruel individual with the right tactics to get millions of followers. This man was known as Adolf Hitler. Hitler was a very powerful and convincing individual. He made the German people believe he was a compassionate man looking at the best options to get Germany back to where there needed to be post WWI. Hitler did not step into office and bluntly tell the German people he was going to completely annex the race of Jews. If he did this then he would have never been given the authority he was given. With that being said, the German people as a whole should not be guilty. Majority of the German people supported Hitler for many reasons. He found ways to get
It was in December 1948, when it was approved unanimous the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide at France which became the 260th resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations. What made the leaders of the 41 States create and sign this document in which the term Genocide was legally defined? This document serves as a permanent reminder of the actions made by the Nazis and their leader Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust where more than five million of European Jews were killed. In summary I will explain what were the events that leaded the ordinary Germans kill more than six million Jews in less than five years. To achieve this goal, I will base my arguments on the Double Spiral Degeneration Model provided by Doctor Olson during the spring semester of the Comparative Genocide class.
The Holocaust was a sad period in our history where the corrupt moral code of a nation took the lives of Six million people. Germany under rule of Hitler’s Nazi party killed and incapacitated anyone who didn’t fit into the Nazi’s idea of an ideal society. Hitler inherited a decrepit nation; in the 1920s Germany was plunged into a depression, which left many citizens unemployed, hungry and homeless. Living in conditions of hopeless poverty the country was overwhelmingly starving for economical and social reform. Just as they thought their prayers for a new leader weren’t heard; Hitler emerged inspiring and charming the beaten down people of Germany with nationalism, giving them a new found since of unity. The nation of Germany so
...ociation of independent countries that have agreed to work together to prevent and end wars” in the article United Nations. Positives are promoted by the UN in attempt to improve global social conditions such as international cooperation, economic development, and humans rights. Problems are to be resolved peacefully and diplomatically rather than relying on force. Lemkin brought forth the idea for the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; The United Nations adopted it. The agreement states that acts or intents of genocide are considered crimes under international law, and nations need to work to prevent and punish such acts. Author Richard Rupp informs us in his article Genocide that “In 1998, the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda became the first international court to pass a guilty verdict for the crime of genocide”.
SAINATI, TATIANA E. "Toward A Comparative Approach To The Crime Of Genocide." Duke Law Journal 62.1 (2012): 161-202. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 Nov. 2013
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. .
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).
Genocide is the intentional killing of groups with the purpose of eliminating the existence of the group. The term "genocide" was created in 1944 to describe the systematic elimination of Jews under the Nazi regime. The word combines the Greek suffix, "geno-", meaning race, and "-cide", meaning "killing". According to Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, genocide refers to the following acts that are meant to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group by causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (directly or through actions causing death), deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group (e.g. forced sterilization), or forcibly transferring children (persons under the age of 14 years) of the group to another group. Article III of the convention defines "genocide, the conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide" as punishable acts. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the he Genocide Convention on 9 December 1948, and the Convention was commenced on 12 January 1951. The Genocide Convention has been ratified by over 130 nations and over 70 nations have made provisions for the punishment of genocide in domestic criminal law. Article 6 of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court includes the content of Article II of the Genocide Convention as a crime. (http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/whatisit.html)
Although many people across Germany were threatened into believing such hateful Nazi ideas at the time, there were still individuals who took a stand against the mistreatment. Not everyone had the courage to stand up for their beliefs, but those who did are still remembered today for their heroic actions. Whether it’s the Catholic Church that stood up for the disabled, or the Danes that helped to save over 8,000 Jews, it is clear that there are people who are willing to do what they can to stop such cruel behavior. Often times, Hitler’s cruel actions are the only moments that people seem to remember, but it is also uplifting to remember those that were brave enough to stand up against the mistreatment, even though fear was holding them back.
Hymowitz, Sarah, and Amelia Parker. "Lessons - The Genocide Teaching Project - Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law." American University Washington College of Law. American UniversityWashington College of Law Center for Human Rights and Humanitaian Law, 2011. Web. 9 Mar. 2011. .