The topic of genocide is not one I would have chosen for myself, but one that I have had to tackle given my Armenian heritage. As children and grandchildren of genocide survivors, Armenians in the diaspora have had to carry a certain weight of history. Why do genocides occur? What was the Holocaust? How do we prevent ethnic cleaning in the future?

Grappling with these questions leads us down different paths, difficult topics to be sure, but also quite fruitful. They help us to understand today’s problems and challenges. I do not get out of bed every morning with the intention of writing about the Holocaust and similar genocides every day, but it is worth examining whom and for what reasons genocide perpetrators are given comfort or sanctuary.

April 25 is not an official public holiday outside of Australia and New Zealand, but it is nevertheless an important anniversary to be remembered. I am not referring to Anzac Day, important as that is. On April 25, 1945, American and Soviet troops met up for the first time on the Elbe River, near the city of Torgau, eastern-central Germany. The Soviets fought their way to Nazi Germany from Moscow. The US, having opened a second front in Western Europe in June 1944, fought their way to Germany.

The meeting of both sides, fighting in a common struggle against fascism and the perpetrators of the Holocaust, was a joyous occasion. There was singing, dancing and drinking. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged between Soviet and American troops. Some formed lifelong friendships which survived through the subsequent decades.

Though not an official holiday, the Elbe river meeting is still commemorated until today. The Russian ambassador to the US visits Arlington National Cemetery where American veterans of World War Two, among other conflicts, are buried.

The Elbe Day spirit seemed to augur well, a spirit of cooperation and friendship across borders. Superpower cooperation in an atmosphere of mutual cordiality ruled the day. That spirit however, did not last long.

When Allied troops landed on the coast of France on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), there were accompanied by thousands of American intelligence agents. Their purpose was to collect, collate and organise information about German scientists, their military work, their technical expertise, and even the individual scientists themselves. Once captured, this information and the relevant Nazi scientists were transported via detention camps to mainland United States.

Nazi scientists, those who had helped to implement the worst atrocities of the Holocaust, were heading West.

President Franklin Roosevelt, while leading the negotiations with the other Allied powers, was weakened and dying by late 1944. He hung on to witness the formal end of hostilities. The military intelligence complex, and what would become the nucleus of the future CIA, debriefed the captured German scientists for their eventual employment in US government scientific establishments.

The knowledge capital and skills of these ex-Nazis was required in the struggle against Soviet communism. Their wartime crimes were conveniently ignored.

A typical example of the type of scientist provided refuge in the US after the war is Dr Siegfried Rascher. A medical doctor at Dachau concentration camp, the good doctor conducted experiments on Jewish camp inmates, Soviet prisoners of war, and Polish underground resistance fighters.

For instance, he locked prisoners in specially made low pressure chambers, which simulated oxygen-lacking conditions at high altitudes. Numerous prisoners asphyxiated, suffered from brain injuries due to cerebral hypoxia. Those who miraculously survived in a semi-conscious state were drowned in vats of ice water. Rascher filmed his experiments and autopsies, and sent his results to Nazi authorities.

Wernher von Braun, one of the most famous Nazi rocket scientists to find refuge in the US, relied on slave labourers to provide the materials for his creations. Thousands of prisoners from concentration camps were worked to death, supervised by attendant Nazi foremen.

Georg Rickhey was one such psupervisor at the Dora concentration camp, who was whisked away by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), one of the predecessor components of the CIA. Rickhey, when confronted by prisoners sabotaging production, would hang them 12 at a time. Children at the Dora camp were considered ‘useless mouths’, and Richkey ordered SS troops to club them to death, an order that was carried out.

US military intelligence interrogated thousands of Nazi officers similar to Rickhey, so there was no question that they knew the full extent of the horrors to which concentration camp inmates were subjected. Escaping war crimes trials in Europe, these scientists were considered useful assets in the new Cold War political climate. Rickhey, an engineer by training, was one of thousands of German beneficiaries of Operation Paperclip.

The Elbe day spirit was well and truly dead by the early 1950s.

The horrendous methods employed by Nazi German scientists had been condemned at the Nuremberg trials, and subsequent international military tribunals. By providing sanctuary for, and employing, Nazi scientists, the US authorities were deliberately turning their backs on the victims of the Holocaust. Operation Paperclip was a direct slap in the face for all the US soldiers who had helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp, among others.

On April 29, 1945, when US soldiers confronted the horrific suffering in Dachau, between 35 and 50 German SS officers were killed in reprisal. You are free to condemn these reprisals, but I will not. I do not place an equals sign between the moral culpability of the sadistic SS guards, and the US soldiers who killed in defence of the Dachau camp inmates.

What should be condemned are the actions of the US authorities who deliberately cooperated with and provided employment for those who facilitated the Holocaust and the Nazi war machine. They abandoned the spirit of Elbe for their own geopolitical interests.