With its pitched tile roofs, soaring steeples, stepped gables and billowing flowers cascading from window boxes, Luneburg, Germany, has all the trappings of a place for a tranquil, romantic European respite.

This week, however, this village in southern Saxony has taken on an altogether different image, hosting what can be characterized as the intersection of charming antiquity and pressing immediacy.

Aside from its 1,000-year history as one of the great salt mining areas, Luneburg holds the distinction of having hosted the Belsen trials against perpetrators of the crimes in Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps in 1947. It was also here that Reichsfurer Heimlich Himmler, the SS leader second in power to Hitler and architect of the Jewish genocide, and creator of the massive concentration camp system, was captured in the spring of 1945. Like many within the Third Reich leadership, he escaped the trials and the hangman's noose by biting into a cyanide tablet 70 years ago.

These past 70 years have seen the prosecution of Nazi war criminals proceed with fits and starts with a very small percentage of alleged criminals being convicted. From Nuremberg to Luneburg, the courts have been focused on the Nazi leadership who were directly responsible for mass murder and crimes against humanity. Of the 6,500 SS members who worked in Auschwitz alone, only 49 were ever convicted of a crime.

In a race against time, it is here that retired German Judge Thomas Walther has committed himself, spearheading an effort to resurrect the war crimes trials using recently revised prosecutorial guidelines that eased the burden of proof and awakened the German judiciary to the "little fish" in the Nazi killing machine.

After a 70-year odyssey and an ever-dwindling list of the accused, this may be the last grasp at justice and the final Nazi war crimes trial.

As the clock winds down on history, Walther's persistence has resulted in the indictment of 12 remaining Nazi guards, (the Dirty Dozen) 10 of whom are now deemed unfit for trial, and one of whom recently died. The last and final guard, the 93-year-old former SS guard Oskar Groening, is scheduled to stand for trial during these last weeks of April.

Ironically, Groening had been cleared of war crimes accusations under the statutes as they existed back in 1947. As an impressionable 17-year-old, Groening joined the SS in 1943 and acted as "The Bookkeeper at Auschwitz," confiscating everything of value from incoming prisoners, cataloging it and sending it on to the treasury of the Third Reich. For his part in the Holocaust, Groening claims not to have as much as even slapped the face of a prisoner. He claims to have been merely a cog in the wheel acting as an accountant. He also claims to have twice requested a transfer because of the brutality he witnessed at Auschwitz, a contention that is being challenged by the prosecution.

As a guard, however, he was further obliged to work on the incoming train platforms where prisoners were separated by their ability to work. Those women, children and men found too feeble to work as slaves were sent directly to the gas chamber. Here, Groening insists that he only worked on the platforms three or four times during his tour in Auschwitz, a contention the prosecution regards as being preposterous, given the length of time Groening served in Auschwitz.

Because of what he witnessed, Groening claims to be tortured daily by the cries of victims. In interviews in recent years, Groening, a first-hand witness to the atrocities, would become a voice against those who would deny the Holocaust.

Taking an uncompromising stand, prosecutor Walther is disinclined, however, to accept explanations that have become a pattern in war crimes trials, wherein the accused predictably diverts guilt to higher authorities.

"My colleagues in the past, German prosecutors and judges, did things in the wrong way," Walther has said in press accounts. "You have to learn and you learned in the second term of law studies what is aiding and abetting a crime. Oscar Groening may not have killed with his hands, but he was part of the killing machinery. Being an accessory does not require that you use your own hands."

In the past year, Walther took his search for justice to Toronto, interviewing Hungarian-Canadian Auschwitz survivors to bolster his case against Groening and focusing on the 57-day killing frenzy that left 300,000 Hungarian Jews dead, basically amounting to the execution of 3.5 Jews per minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"The testimony I am gathering will not answer the question, is he guilty or not, but rather will show what the Holocaust means inside the families of the victims to the court to the public," Walther has said.

Walther is looking beyond the Holocaust itself to draw historical lessons. With the recent Charlie Hebdo massacre in France, and the brutality committed by the Islamic State group in the Middle East, he sees evil being recycled. His message admonishes the world and tells the evildoers that even 70 years after their heinous crimes, they can be held accountable. And so Thomas Walther does what he feels compelled to do: continue the search for justice for the victims of atrocities, otherwise evil triumphs when good people do nothing.

m.stamfordadvocate.com