This won't be a popular opinion, but this case for me cries out for us to consider at what point we need to let the past be.

Note that this isn't a case of a crime against humanity, or part of the Holocaust. It was a very basic war crime - the murder of civilians. From the article in the NYT, it sounds very much like the murders were in retaliation for the deaths of German soldiers, probably from partisan action. This is not unlike the very common practice, on all sides, of killing soldiers trying to surrender. They did it. We did it. Similar things happen in war all the time, in Vietnam, in Iraq, etc. If blowing up 10 civilians in a house is worthy of prosecution 65 years later, what do we say about burning hundreds of thousands of civilians to death in their homes in Tokyo?

I guess my point is, this guy was an army lieutenant. Not a Gestapo general or an SS monster. He wasn't participating in a program of genocide, and from the rather spotty evidence it sounds like he might not even have ordered the murders, simply been the OC of the men who committed them.

By all means, lets us continue to prosecute any of the architects of Nazi horror that we catch (I doubt there are many of them left) but given that this level of battlefield war crime was committed countless times and that Allied soldiers committed plenty of them too, it seems like chasing down 90 year old foot soldiers isn't really serving the purpose of justice.

The last time I checked there was no statute of limitations on murder, at least in this country. That is for a reason. Murder is a heinous crime, and the idea that it is somehow less heinous because it is not committed as part of a particular series of murders is ludicrous. Nowhere in your post do you try to explain why a 'casual' battlefield murder should not be treated as any other murder. Your intimation that because battlefield murder is common it is excusable is also insulting, not least to the vast majority of soldiers (at least, of the American and British variety) who somehow manage to not commit mass murder, despite the pressures that all soldiers operate under.

By the way, your casual conflation of Nazi murders with civilian deaths due to Allied bombing raids is exactly the kind of defense that Hermann Goering attempted. It was rejected then at Nuremberg, and it not worth even arguing about now. It is just depressing that a presumably educated person would fail to see the difference.

Let this bastard, who had a nice long life of freedom, rot in prison for his final year or two of life. If he had had any remorse, he's had 65 years to express it. Now he has a great opportunity -- he can atone at the end of his life for something he never had to pay for when it really would have mattered to him.

"not least to the vast majority of soldiers (at least, of the American and British variety) who somehow manage to not commit mass murder, despite the pressures that all soldiers operate under."

Allied soldiers committed plenty of battlefield war crimes, such as the murder of prisoners, in the heat of battle. Anyone who served in combat in WWII will attest to this.

I'm not sure that the Nuremburg trials are really the epitome of justice by which we should judge what is right. The spector of victor's justice that clung to that proceeding largely invalidated it's credibility. See, for example, the convictions of Germans for the invasion of Poland - convictions by a panel of judges which included Russians who, you may recall, participated in the invasion of Poland with their then-allies, the Germans.

I often hear that the strategic bombing campaign, which clearly and deliberately focused on the murder of civilians, was not a war crime, and yet no one can really explain why it isn't.

Anyway, my point wasn't that this guy isn't culpable (though if you read up on this you'll find the 65 year old evidence to be pretty sketchy), it is that I'm not convinced that this kind of prosecution serves any purpose anymore.

There is a reason. It is to prevent European and American goyim from following their natural anti-Semitic attitudes and trying to exterminate the Jews.

Goyim, whether they are Americans or Europeans, are natural anti-Semites, carriers of "the 2000 year old hate" and have to be consciously reminded in every generation of their natural inbred genocidal nature.

That is why your state has a mandatory Jewish Holocaust education program for your children. State statutes require Holocaust in our state for grade school, middle school and high school. If we do not catch your children while they are young and reeducate them, they will grow up to become anti-Semitic genocidal lynchers.

Spending beaucoup bucks chasing down elderly soldiers who have done nothing for two or three generations is even more valuable than chasing down young healthy anti-Semites: it impresses on you sheigetz the utter futility of escape ... ever.

Only by showing their utter dedication to punishing (preferably with death, but life imprisonment will do) gentiles who have slipped through their grasp like this German soldier can you goyim be impressed with the utter futility of attacking Jews.

The "prevention" element of these trials is obviously not to prevent the elderly guy from killing Jews -- he is well beyond that -- but to make it clear to you goyishekopfs that you are next should you exhibit any anti-Semitic tendency.

That is why we Americans have spend hundreds of milions of tax dollars on the DOJ's Office of Special Investigations over the last 35 years. It is staffed with dedicated Jewish attorneys utterly committed to rooting out elderly Germans and other Europeans who did not disclose their WWII activities when they immigrated.

In all fairness, it really isn't a matter of choice for Jews. Jews cannot show the goyim -- even elderly goyim -- any mercy, for the goyim never learn. As Jewish Passover liturgy has preached to Jews throughout the ages, "In each and every generation they rise up against us to destroy us. And The Holy One, blessed be He, rescues us from their hands."

Read my words, pal. I didn't excuse ALLIED war crimes either. I said that murder is murder, and it should be punished -- and on the side of the allies, it mostly was. The allies just didn't raise the murder of civilians to a high art - atrocities were commited on both sides (I thought that Speilberg's Saving Private Ryan gave a good example of that) but ORGANIZED MURDER of either civilians or soldiers was almost nonexistent on the Allied side.

You are simply an idiot if you think that Nuremburg proved nothing, or was 'victor's justice' -- that is an argument that only has credibility with Nazi apologists. The whole idea of 'crimes against humanity' which you cited in your post, came from Nurembug. You seem to believe that the Russians' (who lost 20 million in the war) participating made it lose credibility. Are you seriously arguing that anyone really believes that justice wasn't served there???

You "often hear" that the strategic bombing campaign was a war crime. Mmm, where do you hear that, I wonder? You are perhaps a little too dense or ignorant to understand that the strategic bombing campaign was simply the same techinique that the Axis powers applied to the Allies when they were winning, only, unfortunately for them, it was reappliied to them with force. You don't seem to grasp subtleties very well, so I won't debate the issue of whether the Allies went too far -- a topic for another day, and probably, another interlocuter. As Churchill put it, "The Germans started this war with the assumption that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody else was going to bomb them. They are now learning that that assumption was invalid."

As far as prosecution of murder no serving any purpose, it serves its own -- the purpose of justice. I suggest you have a good think and try and understand why 'imperfect justice' is always going to be better than the alternative of doing nothing just because one can never achieve 'perfect justice.'

Is this the international Jewish conspiracy hour? Are you writing for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? I was annoyed at the Poster, but you are truly a hateful idiot.

OMG! BigBill you are so right! I can barely make it through a day without having to supress my anti-semitic tendancies. It's debilatating!

In any event (& here I'm not being sarcastic, even though I'm certain it will sound that way) - I'd never seen 'beaucoup' in print before & had no idea it was spelled that way. It's interesting & now I must go look up it's entymology.

Which is also good, because it will keep me occupied so I don't have to focus on the burning, white-hot, anti-semitic rage that boils within me.

None of your rebuttals make any sense to me, you are not convincing at all.

In other words this is a political prosecution, what a surprise!

to "anti-semite" or probably more realistically, to "I don't read the postings I commented on". You seem to agree with Bill's anti-semitic ravings -- he is clearly a lunatic -- yet you call yourself "Mr Liberal". Something doesn't quite fit there.

since, of course, you've said nothing.

"Big Bill" is no Jew; I am, and never in my life have I heard any Jew - even in "private" conversations (i.e., among Jews only) spew such hateful garbage.

Many Jews (again including me) believe that interreligious and/or Holocaust studies are necessary to prevent a recurrence of that genocide, but we do NOT believe that everyone out there is an anti-semite. We do believe that ignorance leads to hatred, and hatred to criminal acts, not just against Jews, but, as we have seen, against Blacks here in America, against Armenians in Turkey, against Hutus by Tutsis and Tutsis by Hutus, and by (former) Yugoslavians against each other and everybody else.

The world does not need the kind of language in this post, and in fact I strrongly suspect that the writer is, in fact, an anti-semite, using (and misusing) Jewish terms to create the impression that he represents Jewish thinking.

He does not.

Lupus, you wrote a good post. I think it is pretty clear that Bill is no Jew and is clearly a lunatic. I am not someone who is in favor of making "hate speech" illegal, because it alllows for idiots like Bill to spew their stupidity. It sure can be annoying though.