Living here in Germany, specifically in Potsdam near Berlin, as my wife and I are doing at the moment, one cannot but admire the Germans’ efforts to make up for what has long been the greatest national crime of all, i.e. the Holocaust. Including ten of billions paid in reparations to survivors, their families, and the State of Israel; including a total ban on the pubic display of Nazi symbols of every kind, from the swastika to the so-called Hitler Gruess; including many museums, big and small, that deal with the topic and do what they can to educate the public about it; including a foreign and defense policy that has long been consistently favorable to Israel; including any number of films, plays, public lectures, and books, all of them devoted to ensure that nothing of the ind wil ever recur; and so on and so on right down to the so called Stolpersteine, bricks that are cemented into the pavements of many cities, each one bearing the name of a Jewish individual or family who used to live nearby but lost his/her/their life/lives to the terrible events of 1939-1945. In the whole of history, no group and no people has ever done more to “come to terms” with its past.

And yet it is not “enough.” Nothing can be. What is not clear is why this should be so. After all, both Stalin and Mao Zedong killed more people than Hitler did. Looking back over history, including recent history, finding rulers who tried to do away with entire groups of people is all too easy. Besides, six million? Five? Four? Three? What difference does it make? Two factors may go some—but only some—way to explain the peculiar horror with which the holocaust is associated. First, most genocides took place during, and as a result of, a war waged against the groups in question, i.e enemies. However, the Jews as such were never enemies of Germany. If anything, to the contrary. Many foreign Jews, especially those of Central and Eastern Europe, saw Germany as a model their own countries might well adopt. Most German Jews were very proud to be not only German citizens but bearers of German Kultur; quite some would have joined the Nazi Party if only they had been permitted to do so.

The second explanation is that Hitler an his henchmen systematically targeted not only adults but children too. Not accidentally, by way of “collateral damage,” but deliberately and by design. As Israel’s national poet, Haim Nahman Bialik, once wrote, “avenging a small child is something not even the devil has been able to do.” Enough said.

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So here is a little story of something that happened to me some time ago. I was having a snack and a tea in the lobby of Munich’s Vier Jahreszeiten, one of those hotels that like to add the title “noble” to their names. Doing so I noticed a young woman perhaps 18 or 19 years old. Wearing an apron, she was helping re-organize part of the lobby for a party or reception to be held later in the evening; spreading out table cloths, arranging glasses, and the like. I asked her whether she was aware of the fact that this lobby had been one of Hitler’ favorite haunts during this stays in Munich. In return, all I got was a bland stare.

Considering both the Germans and the Jews, taking the long view, perhaps it is better that way?