Yes, finance is a large part of support. But every one of the victims of the Holocaust was brought to his / her final location by train, and those running, tending and maintaining the trains absolutely had to know that cattle- cars full of people were going in one direction, and coming back the other way empty..... so are they all guilty also? How about the drafted Wehrmacht soldier who was posted as a guard around a ghetto in, say, Warsaw? Should he have refused to stand his post? How about the people packing the food which is sent to Auschwitz to feed those committing the atrocities? This is my thinking- where does the complicity end, or does it ever end? Which brings us to the ultimately and truly final question: should all the people on the 'bad' side just stop doing anything at all, thereby effectively ending any war or conflict at any time? And now for the hard question: who decides which is the 'wrong' side?
The victor writes the history. Before he was executed for war crimes, Prime Minister Tojo said of General MacArthur: if we had won the war, he would be here, awaiting his execution for war crimes. And I believe that is true.
But that is why I posted this thread as a question in the first place; I do not know or claim to know the answer to this question. But the case of Oskar Gröning is as close to the line of deserves punishment / should not be punished as anyone or any case I have ever heard of. He did behave less than spectacularly but would you or I do any better in the identical situation? And he went a long way to redeem himself toward the end of his life by actively speaking out against Holocaust deniers adamantly and very actively but was that enough to bring him back to 'even' or not? Is what he did bad enough to be un-redeemable, ever? We need a long- dead, smart, ancient Greek philosopher to have any shot to answering these questions, at least IMO.
And no, I am not testing anyone other than perhaps myself. I merely posted this because it is questions like these I find so very difficult to answer, and I am not at all sure Herr Groning should have been sentenced to prison. I am equally unsure that he should have been allowed to go free. To me, there is no clear answer, even after a lot of reflection; I like to think (hope?) that other, more able people, such as our own Supreme Court can find the 'correct' answer but what if there IS NO 'correct' answer?
Brian
I you re-read the key part of your sentence, I don't think you're thinking clearly here: ".... he assisted the overall machine in the atrocities ..."
Finance is surely a huge part of running a huge, coordinated effort, whether for good, or evil.
You may be trying to give him a break because you know there were people more directly involved who did a lot worse things.
I don't think that's a good reason to assist something evil. Are you testing us?