Genocide: The West has a history of acting indifferent

Editor, RE: “Germany’s Genocide extradition exposes fault lines in UK rulings” (The New Times, August 21). UK prosecutors would arraign any person(s) suspected of involvement in the Holocaust discovered on their territory, with a very high probability of conviction and the likelihood of dying in prison. But, Churchill and his government were also quite callous to the fate of European Jewry while the Holocaust was being perpetrated. Many historians have pointed to the refusal of the Western Allies during the War to bomb and destroy the railway networks they knew were being used to ferry the Jews and other victims being transported from Occupied Western and Central Europe to the concentration-death camps in the East. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Western allies would make a show of only then discovering the horrors of the concentration-death camps. In reality, they had known about them well before even their invasion of France in June 1944, but had not considered doing anything to disrupt or slow the machinery of extermination worth the diversion of resources and efforts required for their direct war objectives. It is important to remember that at the time antisemitism was widespread all across Europe—and even America. Reminds you of exactly their attitude during the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, doesn’t it! Except, in the case of the 1994 Genocide, the British (and their other Western allies except the French who were direct participants on the side of the genocidaires) just didn’t want to go against what they saw as French interests in a country where they themselves considered they had no vital interests at stake that required opposing their French allies. Mwene Kalinda

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Genocide: The West has a history of acting indifferent