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Volume II · Page 796
have they ended up wiser? The universal fear today is that in their desperation they will repeat the vicious process by saying, "Last time we picked the wrong man. Let us seek a new messiah. He will save us." The lessons of one generation are quickly forgotten by the next, but the inexorable laws of nature are immutable. The tragic fruits of tyranny and intolerance will always be the moral decay of peoples and the degradation of human dignity.
Over the heavy gates which shut in the hapless victims at Dachau is a legend reading, "Work will set you free." The toil of slaves cannot set them free; it only serves to further enslave them. Some day an enlightened German people will storm those gates and all others like them and recast them into an image of Truth — an imperishable figure with eyes open and unbandaged. So long as Truth stands free and untarnished, no future Hitler will ever arise to deceive and degrade the German nation. Then there will never be another Dachau.
PRESIDING JUDGE
FITZROY D. PHILLIPS JUDGE
MICHAEL A. MUSMANNO JUDGE
This Tribunal takes no pleasures in performing the duty which confronts it, but the deliberate enslavement of millions must not go unexpiated. The barbarous acts which have been revealed here originated in the lust and ambition of comparatively few men, but all Germans are paying and will pay for the degradation of their souls and the debasement of the German honor, caused by following the false prophets who led them to disaster.
It would be a travesty on justice to permit those false leaders, including this defendant, to escape responsibility for the deception and betrayal of their people. It would be even a greater injustice to view with complacence the mass graves of millions of men, women, and children whose only crime was that they stood in Hitler's way. Retribution for such crimes against humanity must be swift and certain. Future would-be dictators and their subservient satellites must know what follows their defilement of international law and of every type of decency and fair dealing with their fellow men. Civilization will be satisfied with nothing less.
