This 50th anniversary year of VE day of the Second World War and the recent celebrations in Europe remind us of how different was the nature of that war when contrasted to the Thirty Years' War or to the war in Bosnia. We must not forget that the major similarity of the Second World War to the other two was the Holocaust, enacted principally against the Jews but also against other visible and nonvisible minorities. The Nazis' racial policies were a part of the allies' indecision, appeasement and disbelief before the war. The personal costs noted by Dr. Tabah do not seem very different from those experienced by Mehran and colleagues. Europe after the Second World War was not much different from this picture of the human consequences of war.
All war has a human cost.
Wars of dogma are much worse for all. The Second World War seemed to be a war that had to be fought, and we thought genocide and ethnic cleansing were behind us. Bosnia shows us it is not, and Callot's etchings show us that it is not the first time.