Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To say a prayer is not enough. One has to believe that it's possible for that prayer to be heard.
Of course, the main reason is the change of law in the way Germany has brought Nazi war criminals to trial. The previous rules was that you'd have to have tangible evidence, and documentary evidence was not sufficient.
It's just this long overdue. These people [ex-Nazi brought to trial] should be grateful to the apathy that exists there that prevented them from being brought to trial earlier. All of the people that they committed crimes against had their lives snuffed out, some of them at very young ages. Some of them never had a chance to get married and have children.
Now documentary evidence is acceptable. What does that mean? If you have documentary evidence that a person served as a guard in one of the death camps and the documents have been authenticated, that is grounds to charge the person with crimes against humanity. And that's why you see the spate of trials previously, for example, in the '70s and the '80s, even in the low '90s. That was not the case until the change in the law.
Rest assured that our work is not over because our work has never been only hunting Nazi war criminals. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an institution, a worldwide institution, engaged in combating anti-Semitism, bigotry, racism. And unfortunately, did we say goodbye to genocide after Hitler died in the bunker? No, we didn't. So in such a world, I'm afraid there will always be a need for organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center.