'At the Mind's Limits'

Genocides, once over, have a way of turning into crimes without criminals. In the aftermath, the corpses pile up, denunciations, recriminations, and chants of "never again" fill the air, and the historians, political scientists, and genocide specialists set to work. Meanwhile, few, except the survivors, notice that the murderers themselves are disappearing: into thin air (the Turks), into the maquis (the Khmer Rouge), into the refugee camps (the Rwandans), or into their postwar lives as solid citizens (the Nazis). If you go by the numbers of known killers, you would think that millions of people died at the hands of a few miscreants. Exactly one Nazi, the commander of Auschwitz, admitted to murdering Jews.