One wonders how the passage of time and/or religious conversion alters our feelings about even horrible crimes and events. "It was a long time ago" is a refrain one often hears as though the passage of time makes a crime less severe. And yet it seems that for many it does.

For example, the Swiss decision to let Polanski could have been made 11 months ago, but the heat was too intense then. At the time of his arrest there was an outcry of immense proportion supporting his incarceration. One barometer of public opinion, readers' comments in the NYT and in this publication were overwhelmingly in favor of locking him up forever or worse. Now if you look at readers comments, the opinion has moderated somewhat. It has been a long time, some say. The victim has forgiven him. The California legal system did not act in good faith.

Contrast this to the trial in Germany now taking place. Accused war criminal Ivan Demjanjuk stands accused of crimes committed 70 years ago. He is past 90 and sleeps through most of the proceedings, but rightfully so the prosecution presses on to prove that he was an accessory to mass murder of Jews and others at the infamous Sobibor concentration camp.

Why are some crimes attenuated by time and others not? Why does the zeitgeist change for some people and not for others? What does atone for the "smaller" mistakes that we make, the sins we everyday people commit and those who wrong us?

Thankfully, most of us do not commit horrible offenses. Nevertheless, most of us do make terrible mistakes in our lives we do damage. We harm others and others harm us.

In the category of more "minor" crimes, a friend was fired unjustly from a community position he held many years ago. He was understandably upset about it for years and wouldn't speak to, let alone forgive anyone who was on the board of the institution even though he would run into them often in his neighborhood. There could be no forgiveness for the wrongs and humiliation he suffered and the aggrieved feelings dwelt inside him forever on a low flame.

One day in his analyst's office the conversation came up as it did every so often. His analyst, a deep-thinking man, said: "This story is 25 years old. What is your resistance to forgiving these people? That was a turning point for my friend. He decided to forgive and forget. He said he felt better. "It was time," he said.

The conundrum is that the further away you move from a disaster, a war, or a crime the less harsh it begins to look. The rice paddies in Da Nang, Vietnam look pristine today. Hanoi and Saigon are rebuilt. It did not look that way in 1970. I am told that the coast of Prince William Sound where the Exxon Valdez hemorrhaged thousands of barrels of oil has recovered substantially and perhaps one day the oil spill in the gulf, our worst ever environmental disaster, might look small.

That things change there is no question. But what changes? Is it the perpetrator that changes or the crime that is seen differently, or us?

Put it this way: 70 years after Auschwitz and you will see green grass and yellow daisies growing there.

And that is a crime.