gation to ask forgiveness from those we have offended. But do we have a parallel obligation to forgive those who have offended us? Are there some offenses too serious to permit forgiveness?
             Allow me to answer with a true story: Few people today remember Walther Rathenau – and even fewer Ernst Werner Techow. Walter Rathenau was born in 1867 in a working class district of north Berlin. His father, Emil Rathenau, owned a small, not very successful iron foundry. But Emil had the foresight to buy the European patents for Thomas Edison's electric light. With borrowed money he started the factory that would become the largest electrical company in Germany.
             The outbreak of the First World War threw Walter Rathenau into despair and depression because he anticipated a catastrophe. Nonetheless, he entered the War Ministry and set up a raw material supply department which he successfully headed for six months. Historians estimate that, in the face of the British naval blockade, Rathenau's efforts enabled Germany to continue fighting for one or even two years longer than would otherwise have been the case.
             Against the advice of friends and the forebodings of his mother, he became foreign minister in February 1922. He told his mother "they couldn't find anyone else to do the job." Considering his enormous contribution to the German war effort, it is ironic that, in June of that year, Rathenau was assassinated by anti-Semites who accused the Jews of having stabbed Germany in the back during the war. Of the three assassins, one was killed in a shoot-out with police; one committed suicide to avoid capture; and the third – Ernst Werner Techow – was arrested and stoo
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