On This Date - Meagan Hale

     On this date, October 1, 1946, twelve Nazi leaders were sentenced to death at the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany. Putting men to death cannot exactly be qualified as good but it was not bad either as these twelve men commanded many others to murder 11 million innocent men, women, and children. To some this news brought relief and in the eyes of most of the world this was justice. This in and of itself was not necessarily earth shattering, because anything directly following something as devastating as World War 2 and the Holocaust would seem pretty minute in nature. However, that does not make this event irrelevant. This was evidence to the world that those who judge so harshly that they would condemn 11 million people would not go without punishment. A world without laws, checks and balances, crimes and punishments, will inevitably be self-destructive. I believe the quote, "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it," greatly applies to events such as these. A war that led to a genocide that led to twelve leaders sentenced to death because of a mistake and mindset that doomed millions of innocent people. The consequences of such actions are to be remembered. Even today there are dangerous prejudices that could be leading nations to war for this tragedy to reoccur. As a world, we are skating on thin ice and if too much pressure is applied in the wrong place we will fall through the ice and drown. Then we would become the event that decades from now people are remembering so they are not doomed to repeat our mistake.