At What Point Is the Past "The Past"?

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Ingvar Kamprad died. Aside from the obvious jokes about making "hack" coffins out of IKEA furniture, there's an interesting question that arises with me after reading an article/obituary about the founder of IKEA. According to one article, Kamprad, who was 91, was a pro-fascist in the days of World War II. That strikes me as odd. Not so much that he espoused a popular political belief which he later profoundly apologized for, but that people want to keep bringing it up. In 1994 a Swedish newspaper published an article that dug deep into Kamprad's past -- as in, his teenage years. Influenced, Kamprad said, by his German grandmother's support of Adolf Hitler, the youngster took a pro-Hitler stance. Never mind that he abandoned such notions. Never mind that he apologized. Never mind that the very first IKEA employee in history was Kamprad's best friend, who was Jewish. No, some muckraking "journalist" wanted that "dirty laundry" that Don Henley famously sang about, found it, and hung it out on the clothes line for all to see. As a result, some of Kamprad's obituaries have mentioned this. When the articles surfaced (in 1994, half a century after the fact) Kamprad issued a letter apologizing, blaming his beliefs on being young. (And let's face it, when we're 14 we all think we "know it all" [until we encounter algebra and quickly discover we don't know it all].) Even then, his apology was rejected by some. "We believe in redemption and in the ability of people to correct the errors of their past," wrote Anti-Defamation League regional representative David Lehrer. Others, however, called for a boycott of IKEA. The late West Virginia senator Robert C. Byrd was -- and remains -- a venerable figure in West Virginia. He was the longest-serving senator in American history, and one of the longest-serving members of Congress ever (from 1953 until his death in 2010). There is a high school in West Virginia named after him. He was a Klansman about the same time that Ingvar Kamprad was flirting with fascism. Byrd was forgiven. Even after he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Byrd was forgiven. At what point is the past actually "the past"? And shouldn't the same forgiveness be given to everyone? After all, a famous Rabbi from Nazareth taught His followers that they should pray, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."