A Correction

In the posting immediately below I speak of a lecture I attended on the topic: Did Primo Levi ever forgive the Germans for their bestial treatment of the Jews and others. I then use that as a jumping off point to discuss whether contemporary American policies re: tortures are something for which we will have to ask forgiveness in the future. Some who support the administration's policies in Iraq took offense, as is their right, but one pointed out what I now acknowledge is an error in typing, though not in judgment. I wrote, from the perspective of someone who did not suffer the agonies of Auschwitz, "Is it time to forgive the Nazis? Levi asked. I ask if it’s time to forgive ourselves. Maybe in the first case the answer is yes; the Nazis are dead. In the second, only if we want to avert our eyes, like the good Germans." My mistake was in conflating Germans and Nazis. I intended to ask, as Levi had, "Is it time to forgive the Germans" but instead of writing "Germans," I wrote,"Nazis." To the question is it time to forgive the Germans, I stick with my original emphatic "maybe"; to the question I didn't intend to ask, "Is it time to forgive the Nazis" I respond with "NO, never!"

I was originally thinking of editing the piece as it appears on this blog, so that people would never know of the gaff--but that, it seemed to me, was too much in imitation of the way Winston Smith earned his meager subsistence in 1984, so I leave the original error and ask the reader's forbearance.