The Holocaust as an Excuse

What was Jack Barouh's rationale for tax-cheating? He blamed it on the Holocaust!

Barouh's parents fled the Nazis, and that experience, Jack claims, led him to hide his assets in a UBS Bank Account in Switzerland in case the Nazi regime returns.

Jack got some jail time instead of the home detention his attorney had requested.

I shall not now get into the psychological issues regarding Holocaust survivors, other than to say that they can be very, very difficult people to deal with. Ditto for their children. But there are plenty of survivors and children of survivors who are far, far more grateful to the United States, where they found life and freedom, than Jack Barouh. The one who comes to mind is a woman I once had the challenge of supervising, an Auschwitz survivor who could easily have gone out on a mental disability, but who insisted, from sheer gratitude, upon remaining employed by the U.S. Government. And I knew another woman, whose family got out of Beograd just 3 weeks before Hitler's army marched in and started killing the Jews and others, who had the brains, beauty and personality to work anywhere she wished, but who, out of similar gratitude, remained employed by various agencies of the U.S. Government (including the IRS).

I personally know plenty of other Holocaust survivors and children of Holocaust survivors who are/were employed by the Internal Revenue Service. They certainly are not buying Jack's explanation. Nor, for that matter, am I.