John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker, is 88, lives in a Cleveland suburb and has long denied that he was a Nazi death camp guard in World War II.
Not many people believe him.
The U.S. first tried to deport him in 1977. He was extradited to Israel, where he was convicted of being a brutal camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible. He was nearly executed but then was cleared of that charge and returned to the U.S. His citizenship was restored but then revoked, based on new evidence offered by the Justice Department that he was indeed guilty of Nazi-era crimes.
Demjanjuk has fought the charges all along the way. Recently, though, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to step into his case. Justice Department officials say Demjanjuk will be deported to Germany, Poland or his native Ukraine.
Again, he’s 88. The war ended more than six decades ago. And every time there’s news of another aged Nazi war criminal arrested, some people wonder: Is it time to stop pursuing them? Has the statute of limitations run on the atrocities they committed a half-century ago? Is it time to show them the mercy they never showed their victims?
No.
Last month, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, named after the famed Nazi hunter, issued its annual “most wanted” list. Demjanjuk is No. 2, behind Dr. Aribert Heim, who was indicted in absentia in Germany on charges he murdered hundreds of inmates at Mauthausen concentration camp, where he was camp doctor. Heim injected prisoners in the heart with gasoline and other toxic substances to see which killed them more quickly, according to the testimony of death camp survivors. When an 18-year-old Jewish youth came to the clinic with a foot problem, Heim mutilated and killed him, removing his head and boiling the flesh off, keeping the skull on display, a witness testified.
If he is still alive, Heim is an old man. He and other fugitives around the world are living out their final days. Some probably have stopped looking over their shoulders for Nazi hunters, particularly if they live in one of many countries around the world that have failed to aggressively pursue former Nazis.
But there is no statute of limitations on these kinds of gruesome war crimes. There shouldn’t be. As long as Heim draws breath, he should be hunted.
Since January 2001, there have been 67 convictions of Nazi war criminals, at least 48 new indictments, and hundreds of new investigations, the Wiesenthal Center reported recently. “Despite the somewhat prevalent assumption that it is too late to bring Nazi murderers to justice, the figures clearly prove otherwise, and it is clear that numerous cases of such criminals will continue to come to trial during the coming years,” said Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who coordinates the center’s research on Nazi war criminals.
Age, he says, is not an obstacle to prosecution. Political will is. Some countries, such as the U.S., Canada, Germany and Italy, rate high marks for continuing efforts. Many others don’t.
Genocide and ethnic cleansing still happen. Just look at Darfur. Or Rwanda. Or Bosnia. Those who commit these atrocities may think that they will never answer for their crimes, but the pursuit of these Nazis tells dictators, thugs, murderers and henchmen around the world that crimes against humanity won’t be overlooked or forgotten.
