Take the Money And Run

My Polish mother-in-law recalls being shipped off to Germany during the war in less than horrifying hues, but slave labor is, after all, a less than pleasant experience. And Germany, despite the tremendous burden of trying to integrate the former East Germany, has tried to do what it can to make up for the horrors of the Nazi period, an effort which is laudable. For this reason the current scandal with the disappearing compensation to Ostarbeiters struck a chord with me, as it should with us all. To be completely honest, stealing has become a way of life in this part of the world. A decade ago I myself received a $25,000 grant to buy computers for an organization best left nameless, and the computers were, of course, stolen. But stealing the well-deserved compensation of the little old men and women taken for forced labor in Germany over half a century ago is something I find particularly disgusting. One has to ask with our author whether there is indeed anybody who can be trusted in Ukraine. There is, of course, but they are few and far between in this nation’s elite. It is a country where most people tend to think that business ethics is a contradiction in terms, and without understanding the ethics of doing business a civilized market economy will remain simply impossible.

I have spent all my adult life studying this country, trying to understand it, and I cannot say that I like what I see. Frankly speaking, I am ashamed. This country could be a veritable heaven on earth, if only, to paraphrase Marx, the dead hand of all the past generations would cease to hang like a curse on the brow of the living. Overcoming the Soviet legacy will not be easy, as Germany, inheritor of one of the most “normal” parts of the former Soviet empire, must know. But until that fateful legacy is thrown off, this will never be a normal, civilized country. I pray that it will be, but I despair when I try to foresee when. Silas Lapham, if ever you were needed, it is here and now.