
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 6, 1990                   TAG: 9003062020
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HISTORIAN: WAR'S LESSONS VALUABLE

Adolph Hitler's effort to kill up to 10 million people for what his party called "racial impurities" - is fast fading into history as its survivors move toward old age and death.

Charles Sydnor, president of Emory & Henry College and a specialist in World War II history, said Monday that the atrocities of 50 years ago in Europe are documented like no other historical event.

Sydnor, who addressed about 35 members of the interfaith Roanoke Valley Ministers Conference at Second Presbyterian Church, said even though classes in Nazi history are offered in many colleges and universities, he also is glad Virginia secondary school students soon will be offered the courses.

It is important, Sydnor said, for people to understand the Nazi atrocities, which affected not only Jews, but also Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally disabled and anyone else who did not fit the Nazi ideals.

Sydnor said he does not think a similar disaster will occur in the next half century because conditions that led to the mass killings in Germany will not be present.

Among the conditions he cited were: Hitler's paranoia; Germany's bitterness over harsh surrender terms and a bankrupt economy after World War I; and a climate of anti-Semitism that had been in the country since the Middle Ages.

Modern Germany is full of records, not only of the survivors of camps, but of those who participated in the killings, Sydnor said.

Though many older Germans have said they knew nothing about why their Jewish neighbors disappeared before and during World War II, Sydnor asserted that such ignorance was impossible for anyone but the most isolated.

He cited the words of a famed pastor, Martin Niemoller, who survived a concentration camp.

Upon release, Niemoller said he waited too long to speak out against the Nazi persecutions because the actions, at first, did not affect him.

Such apathy is typical of people in every time and place, Sydnor said.

It is only through the reflections of historians and others that valuable lessons can be learned and applied to the present.

The Roanoke unit of the National Conference of Christians and Jews sponsored the lecture.

by CNB