“Should we pardon them?” That was the question posed by the French philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch in a 1971 essay of that title about Nazi war crimes. Jankélévitch passionately opposed a statute of limitations for these atrocities. He argued that crimes against humanity – those committed in Auschwitz, for example – are dehumanizing in the most basic sense: they attack the very essence of what it is to be human. Crimes like these, he wrote, cannot be covered by reconciliation.

Did forgiveness die in the concentration camps?