I was born a few days after Hitler marched into Poland, and as a boy I absorbed, by moral osmosis and overheard conversation, some of the lessons of the time--for example, lessons taught by Auschwitz and Josef Mengele.
So when I hear about euthanasia and Jack Kevorkian, sirens go off in my mind. Maybe I'm working with an old paradigm, like Munich, but I can't help it. I think of the case of Franz Stangl, a perfectly conventional Vienna policeman and good citizen who after the Anschluss became a security officer at hospitals for the aged, infirm and imbecilic, and helped--humanely...