I have been reading this rather interesting article on the BBC website
The article is based around looking for those Nazi officers who are still wanted by the UK & US governments for war crimes.
Split into four sections the article focuses on if it is right or wrong to still find these men and bring them to justice. In ten years from now the biological clock would mean that most, if not all, of these men would be dead from old age and the cost involved in tracking these people down.
The first article begins with saying that Justice has not been done and that these men must face up to the crimes that they committed.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the German judge and prosecutor Fritz Bauer estimated there were 100,000 Germans who were responsible in one way or another for mass killings of Jews. Other estimates suggested as many as 300,000.
Bauer also said less than 5,000 people had been prosecuted, which amounts to a “tear drop in the ocean.
But in the 1970s there was a shift in Holocaust consciousness, a demand from the public to know more about it.
As the second generation began to question what their parents did in the war, and historians began to ask questions about governments and their policies toward Jews, so too did interest in war crimes increase.
In a report in
Its last annual report in April 2008 noted that there were 608 investigations under way across the world, and that 76 convictions had been achieved in the preceding seven years.
It gave the USA an A grade for its efforts to bring Nazis to trial, an accolade that no other country has achieved.
The UK, which received a C as recently as 2001 – for “minimal success that could have been greater” – had dropped to the X category, indicating that it “failed to take any action whatsoever to investigate suspected Nazi war criminals”.
Those that are among the most wanted are some responsible for the ordering the deaths of thousands of Jews during the early 1940’s.
The article concludes if it is “Right or Wrong” to continue the hunt for these criminals, bearing in mind the legal costings and also the age of these men. Comments from the public think it is time to move on and let what was in the past remain in the past.
Personally I think that these men should still be brought to justice, no matter what the cost. The horrific events of the Holocaust will remain charred on the soul of humanity of eternity. It is something that can never happen again, and if those involved are still breathing then they must face the consequences.
Interesting debate.