Sixty-nine years ago, Siert Bruins allegedly killed a Dutch resistance fighter. This Monday, he was placed on trial for Nazi war crimes. No matter how many times people say the old mantra “time heals all wounds,” for victims of the Nazi regime, this platitude will never be true.
Nazi war crimes are an issue that will never be put to rest, because, beyond all the pain caused by the Nazi atrocities, we still want to prove that no harm can be done without punishment. We need to believe that by holding the perpetrators accountable, we will be able to prevent those massive injustices against humanity from occurring again.
Siert Bruins became a member of the Nazis’ Waffen SS after the Nazis seized control of his homeland in 1941. Over the years of working under the regime, he gained prestige and rose to a rank equivalent to sergeant. He was later transferred to the Netherlands, where he worked for an intelligence agency and the Security Police.
It was during his time in the Netherlands that he is believed to have killed Aldert Klaas Dijkema with an accomplice. Although it is not certain whether or not Bruins’s gun actually fired the lethal bullet, he is still to be held accountable for his violence. If convicted, Bruin’s case will prove that murder is ultimately irreconcilable and no statute of limitations can render the worst crimes moot.
Although my great grandparents left Europe before the Holocaust, there were members of my family and many others left behind in Germany that were sent off to concentration camps. Many of these mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers fell victim to the genocide perpetrated by the Nazi soldiers either in gas chambers or the harsh conditions of the work camps. Even though I did not personally know those victims, I still feel for the suffering they had to bear. In those years, we lost a piece of humanity.
But, should a man like Bruins be offered a chance at redemption, after so much time has passed? Many people are asking if there should be some statute of limitations for the 92 year-old man entering the court room dependent upon a walker—if it is time for healing and acceptance, rather than a revisiting of painful wounds.
Maybe there is some reason in these ideas. We are all capable of doing good and evil and have moments where we morally falter. Under the right circumstances, anyone’s ethical code could be swayed.
If someone is offered power after years of oppression, it is hard to say that even the most humble person would not accept it. If it were ingrained in a man’s mind over and over again that he is superior to another, even the most righteous might eventually believe it. If a suffering man were told the source of his problems, even the most levelheaded person would begin to feel a sense of bitter resentment.
As humans, we are inclined to accept whatever reality is presented to us, especially when it is more desirable than the truth. If a man on shaken moral ground is given a gun and ordered to shoot someone he is told is the cause of his problems, he will most likely pull the trigger.
I understand how the actions taken by men under the Nazi regime might have been committed under duress. All of us have the capability to commit crimes, to do wrong, to hurt, and to kill. But understandable does not mean forgivable. We all have the ability to put down the gun and say no. We all possess an intrinsic good that protects humanity, as the Nuremburg Trials established decades ago.
No matter how deeply we feel for the victims and despise the injustice committed to millions of people, no one will ever be in a position to grant forgiveness. Murder cannot be forgiven because it eliminates the only people who have the right to grant forgiveness. To let Bruins off the hook would not grant him a true second chance. Not a single person today can accept an apology owed to a lost generation.
Even seven decades cannot separate Bruins from his crimes. He may not be the person he once was, but he is still accountable for his actions. His trial is not about dredging up old grudges or believing that people cannot change after 69 years. It is about the silencing of a generation, and an insistence that justice will always matter.
“Siert Bruins became a member of the Nazis’ Waffen SS after the Nazis seized control of his homeland in 1941.”
What homeland was seized in 1941? Did the author mean 1940?