I suppose the story played out hundreds, even thousands of times. A young man, patriotic and caught up in the fervor of a country at war, enlists in military. His natural skills and talents run more toward accounting and paperwork than the traditional duties of a soldier, so he is assigned to desk work. From his position, however, he witnesses the atrocity of war - even worse, the victims in this case are not enemy combatants, but rather citizens of his own country and the countries conquered by his country who are being systematically destroyed: women, men, children, elders . . . It is genocide. But he finds himself to be just one small person in a gigantic organization and not a person in a position of power, but rather a rank and file serviceman with assignments and duties to do. He tries to ignore the things he has witnessed and goes on with his work.

Years pass. The war ends - not well for his country. There are times of short supply and great need. He survives. He goes on with his life. He becomes an old man.

Those who witness war, however, never recover from the experience. The war is always a part of them. At the age of 93, Oskar Groening is facing a war crimes trial. It may be one of the last of the big public trials for Nazi war crimes. There is little argument of what Mr. Groening did and what he witnessed. “I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I was on the ramp when the selections took place.” There is no question that he was a direct witness to genocide in unspeakable proportions. In the two months in 1944 when Mr. Groening served at the Auschwitz camp as many as 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought to the camp and at least 300,000 were gassed to death. His job was to count the money confiscated from the new arrivals. He has denied any part in the actual killing of persons.

You can’t see what he has seen without having it affect you for the rest of your life.

In the 1980’s charges were brought against him, but later dropped because of a lack of evidence for his personal involvement in the killings.

In 2005, he decided to speak out about what he had witnessed. He allowed an interview with Der Spiegel and another with the BBC documentarians. It has been reported that he decided to go public because he felt that the truth needed to be told in the face of Holocaust deniers.

Facing the judges in his trial he said, “I ask for forgiveness. I share morally in the guilt but whether I am guilty under criminal law, you will have to decide.”

I suppose that in the flow of human history whether or not a 93-year-old man receives a sentence of 3 to 15 years in jail is not a huge thing. Nonetheless, it is important that we don’t forget what happened. Telling the truth in the face of deniers and revisionists is critical. We owe it to the victims to never forget what happened.

At what point do we become personally responsible for the things that our society and our government does? It is easy to see ourselves as small and insignificant and powerless in the face of the great sweep of history. I am just one citizen and taxpayer, but can I maintain my illusion of innocence when a drone, sent by my government, hits the wrong target and innocents die? Of course my role is far different from that of a guard at an execution camp, and their is a big difference between trying to prevent an act of terrorism and systematically destroying people because of their religious traditions and ethnic heritage. Still these are questions worth pondering for every citizen of a nation that has power to wield.

I remember so well our visit to Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial in 1978. I can still hear the crunch of the clean gravel that replaced the dirt walkways. I have peered into the empty bunkhouses where so many were crammed into bare wooden shelves instead of beds. I walked down to the remaining crematoria and looked into the ovens. I looked up at the guard towers and the fences atop the walls. I read that at liberation the residents of the nearby town were forced to march into the camp and see the remains of what had happened there. Many residents who lived within sight of the walls claimed that they had no knowledge of the systematic killings that were taking place and the source of the smoke that rose from the crematoria chimneys.

Is failure to see the evil that is at hand also participation in the crime?

I don’t expect us to come up with solutions to the moral dilemmas posed by the wars of the 20th century. I expect to be wrestling with the implications of these events for all of my life.

But, like Mr. Groening, I can at least refuse to participate in attempts to forget or erase the crimes of humans against other humans. I can study and learn what I can about history and I can speak out when others want to deny or change the story. We owe at least that much to the victims.

The photographs of the concentration camps are so grotesque that I am not able to look at them for long. The images are so stark that they overwhelm. One of the most impressive displays in the U.S. National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. is a huge pile, in the center of a room, of shoes confiscated from the victims of the gas chambers. There are shoes of all sizes, but many - too many - are the shoes of children. When groups of people can convince themselves that children are a threat simply because of their inheritance, there is something very wrong.

At Dachau and at Auschwitz and at other concentration camp sites there is a simple marker with words written in a dozen languages. It simply says, “Never again.” This must be our pledge.

To keep that pledge we have to remember as accurately as possible what happened there. To keep that pledge we need yet another trial and yet another international conversation. These are still very important issues.

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