I was watching Law & Order last nite and once again they had a trial with a Nazi war criminal. Since the writers have included this theme in several episodes, it got me thinking.
How many Nazi concentration camp guard/Nazi war criminals enterered the US after WWII? How many are still alive? Why should we/do we still care, especially in a political sense?
Here is some info on the latest concentration camp guard to be caught in the US.
The answer to the last question goes beyond the factual, but I’ll try anyway.
The evil that was done in those camps is timeless. Going after the people who committed the crimes, even if they’re now toothless and tottering on the edge of the grave, sends the message to anyone who might contemplate participating in such acts in the future that they will always be hunted down and will never be able to stop looking over their shoulder. Deterrence? Maybe.
Put another way - say someone abducted and murdered your child and got away undetected. By sheer chance he is found out at the age of 80. He’s never done a day of time for his crimes. He has emphysema, gets around with a walker and is generally unfit enough to be considered a further crime risk.
What’s your response (or the response of one of your descendants) to someone who says “Why make a fuss after all this time?”
There are still a few Nazi war criminals around in the U.S. There is a special unit in the Justice Dept. devoted to hunting them dow and having them deported, among other things. Link:
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/osi.html
I had the privilege of dealing with a few of these cases when I worked in Immigration Court. Note to self: never read eyewitness testimony of ar crimes before lunch. If you read the testimony of survivors (more of which became available with the opening of East Bloc archives after the breakup of the Soviet Union), you’d see why we still devote resources to that kind of thing.
One other note.
U.S. officials historically have been less than uniformly diligent in hunting down Nazi war criminals, and in some instances even facilitated their escaping justice.