In my first semester of law school Dean Harvey turned his Civil Procedure lecture over to a survivor of Auschwitz. For 45 minutes we listened to what he had to do to be the only member of his family to walk out alive. It was ghastly, but I had heard stories of the Holocaust before, had seen “Night and Fog” before, and wondered why we were hearing this.
At the end of his presentation, Dean Harvey went back to the podium and all he said was: “Your duty as lawyers is to make sure this never happens again.” Best lesson I ever had on the real meaning of the Rule of Law. Unfortunately, as we all walked out of the lecture hall, all of my classmates were saying “Yeah, but that can’t happen here.”
Having just received a degree in German, and studied a lot of German literature, I knew that’s also what the average German of 1927 would have said.
Any atrocity that has happened, can happen again. Plus some new ones, I’m sure.