I have an old friend who is Jewish and whose father survived a NAZI concentration camp in Poland. He was basically an infant when we went in.
He naturally hated the NAZIs and the German nation of the time, but he maintained a lifelong deeper distrust and probably-bigoted hatred for Poles (and Slavs from that part of the world in general) because it was Polish neighbours who put him in there, and he saw plenty of enthusiastic Polish accomplices.
Germans back in Germany or on the western front could often claim plausible ignorance of what the NAZIs were up to with the concentration camps. Volunteering in an SS militia in the lands where the bulk of the extermination of Jews was happening is another form of evil entirely.
The holocaust is the most horrible crime of the 20th century, probably of all of human history. Being an accomplice to it, even just in thoughts and ideology, is repugnant with no excuse.
He naturally hated the NAZIs and the German nation of the time, but he maintained a lifelong deeper distrust and probably-bigoted hatred for Poles (and Slavs from that part of the world in general) because it was Polish neighbours who put him in there, and he saw plenty of enthusiastic Polish accomplices.
Germans back in Germany or on the western front could often claim plausible ignorance of what the NAZIs were up to with the concentration camps. Volunteering in an SS militia in the lands where the bulk of the extermination of Jews was happening is another form of evil entirely.
The holocaust is the most horrible crime of the 20th century, probably of all of human history. Being an accomplice to it, even just in thoughts and ideology, is repugnant with no excuse.