My Father, the Nazi.

Barbara Cherish has had to deal with the aftermath of her father's occupation her whole life. It has become her identity, she has been judged for it, and punished for it. Her father, Arthur Liebehenschel, was the Kommandant of Camp I in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp during World War II. As I was reading an article I discovered on the subject, I found myself sympathizing incredibly with Cherish. Her father was executed following the end of the war, and her mother later committed suicide in a mental institution, leaving her in foster care since age six. She never even had the chance to build a relationship with her parents, and yet she faces the consequences and feels the guilt of their actions every day. In her book, "The Auschwitz Kommandant: A Daughter's Search for the Father She Never Knew," Cherish addresses her situation, and what kind of emotions it has left her with. She speaks about the good reputation that her father had with the prisoners at Auschwitz, and why she believed he did the things that he did.

Reading this article made me wonder a lot about family guilt. If a person is guilty of a crime, what consequences should fall on the person's family? Think about a child getting in trouble at school- should the child's parents be blamed? In my opinion, they should (in part) be at fault. The distinction becomes much more complicated as people age, however. Of course, Barbara Cherish should not have been blamed for her father's actions; she was only a small child when the war was even taking place. But how should a family take responsibility for the actions of their kin?

In "The Crucible," Arthur Miller writes in the "Echoes Down The Corridor" that "Twenty years after the last execution, the government awarded compensation to the victims still living, and to the families of the dead" (135). Did the families of the wrongly-accused witches deserve compensation for their ancestor's executions? Does Barbara Cherish deserve compensation for her father's execution?