The trial of a former German infantry commander for Nazi war
crimes took 11 months, and ended in what is nowadays a
rare conviction.
Josef Scheungraber has been jailed for life after being convicted of the murder
of 10 civilians in an Italian village during
World War II.
A Munich state
court sentenced the 90-year-old German after
a type of trial that is now quite rare.
The passage
of time since the war and the patchy record of
governments in pursuing Nazis and their collaborators
mean that, while many Nazis have faced justice
and been convicted, far more have slipped through
the net.
In the 1950s
and 1960s, German judge and prosecutor Fritz
Bauer estimated there were 100,000 Germans responsible
in one way or another for mass killings of Jews
during the war. Other estimates suggested a figure
as high as 300,000.
The judge
also said fewer than 5,000 people had been prosecuted
and, while there have been many convictions,
there has not been a significantly large addition
to that number in the years since.
Late efforts
Serge Klarsfeld
pursued several Nazis and collaborators after
WWII, including Klaus Barbie, Maurice Papon and
Paul Touvier. He runs an organisation called
Sons and Daughters of Jews Deported from France.
While welcoming
Tuesday's guilty verdict, he expressed doubt
that Scheungraber would ever actually be jailed.
"It's good to have such decisions because it helps the families in Italy and it's
a solution to their pain," he said.
"But he will not go to jail, he is too old.
"Today's
tendencies are that we can pursue these people
because they are old and they will not go to
jail, even if convicted.
"If,
decades ago, Nazis had been pursued, they would
have been younger and would have had to be sent
to jail. Prosecutors do not want to send old
men to jail."
Nazi trials
Mr Klarsfeld's
argument is borne out to some extent by cases
such as that of French Nazi collaborator Maurice
Papon.
He was famously
convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity
for his role in the collaborationist Vichy government,
and sentenced to 10 years in a French prison
in 1998.
But he served
only three, on grounds of ill health, and was
released in 2002.
Lithuanian
Algimantas Dailide was convicted in 2006, aged
85, of persecuting and arresting two Poles and
12 Jews while a member of the Nazi-backed police
in WWII.
But the judge
at his trial in Vilnius did not give him a jail
term, saying he was too old and "no longer a threat to society".
Erich Priebke, aged in his eighties, was jailed for life in Italy in 1998 for
his role in the massacre of 335 Italians in 1944.
But in 1999 he was given leave to serve the remainder of his sentence under house
arrest in his lawyer's home, on grounds of ill
health.
He was also
later briefly allowed to work at his lawyer's
offices in Rome, before his work permit was cancelled
following furious protests.
Mr Klarsfeld
does welcome current attempts by Germany to bring
Nazis to justice - the cases of John Demjanjuk
and Heinrich Boere are due to be heard in Germany
within months, for example.
But he says
these efforts should have been exerted much sooner.
"Germany's
efforts today are something that is positive,
but at the same time the same prosecutors should
have pursued Nazis 20 or 30 years ago, because
now they are only able to go after people who
were often nothing more than guards and had little
responsibility.
"But
their superiors, who had more responsibility,
were not pursued and now they are dead."
'No excuse'
Dr Efraim
Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
which is based in Jerusalem, said he was "very pleased" with Scheungraber's conviction.
"This
reinforces the message that the passage of time
in no way diminishes the crimes of the perpetrator.
"It's
important to bring these people to justice because
they are guilty and deserve to be punished," he said.
"Old
age is no excuse for murder."
Dr Zuroff
also acknowledged that there had been a "recent distinct improvement in the efforts made by the German judiciary, which
is better late than never".
"There's
a realisation that we're in the final phase of
bringing Nazis to justice. These trials will
not be possible in five or seven years' time.
It's important that this is done while it can
be done."
However, Dr
Zuroff believes there is still enough time for
several more alleged Nazis to be put on trial
before their age takes them beyond the reach
of the courts.
"We
will see several additional trials, with more
non-Germans such as John Demjanjuk placed on
trial.
"We
encourage the German judiciary to do as much
as they can to bring these people to justice."
news.bbc.co.uk
|