For one (now, I'm not quite sure on the specifics here and this was told to me by a peer source) how can an almost ninety-year-old German man living in the United States be deported back to Germany and charged with murder on hundreds, even thousands of accounts that were all acquired in a certain concentration camp during the Holocaust?
Of course, the acts of evil and persecution are not to be ignored. However, these acts were carried out because of law and the consequences of not obeying them; no if's and's or but's.
Imagine. You are told by a diligent and rigid system that you are to adhere to a strict policy or your family or your very own life will be at stake. And it was true! This is no "Click it or ticket" policy at hand, these were people.
So, who is the modern law system to say that these crimes are fit to enter a courthouse at all? Who is to say that even they would never commit the heinous acts circa 1939-1945 if pushed far enough?
After seeing The Reader, I wondered how anyone could be tried for something that was legal and the law in their country at that particular time that the crime was committed. It just doesn't make sense. Awful example, but what if you had a horrible habit of spitting your gum out on the cement? Then, sixty years later, they pass a law forbidding the mere act. The consequence if you do happen to expel a gum ball onto the pavement; death. Woops, but the government officials get a hold of a picture of you hawking a sizable amount of Juicy Fruit on the street; bada bing, bada boom, you're killed for it. Basically, there's no account taken for the time and culture in which the act was committed.
That is all. For now.
A scene from The Reader YUM!
