Klaus Barbi, from 1942 to 1944, head of the Gestapo in Lyon, nicknamed the "Bleacher of Lyon" for his cruelty. Or Kurt Liška and Herbert Hagen, responsible for the deportation of 76.000 Jews from France to death camps, including 11.400 children. These are three of the many Nazi war criminals and their collaborators who were found by the famous Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld and thus made it possible for them to be brought to justice. And who were therefore unable to spend a peaceful old age somewhere anonymous. Unlike many other Nazis who, despite their atrocities, lived undisturbed.
Lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, who himself survived the Holocaust, tells DW: "We only prosecuted criminals who made decisions about the fate of large numbers of Jews, we only prosecuted the leaders of the Final Solution. Our search and participation in the arrest of Barbie after a twelve-year struggle from 1971 to 1983 brought us great applause in France."
Even in Germany, which for decades had limited the search for Nazi perpetrators to a few leading figures, the spectacular discovery of Barbie in Bolivia attracted attention and approval. The Klarsfelds, who received the German Federal Order of Merit for their work in 2015, saw the hunt for Nazis as their life's mission.
They thus laid the foundation for the historic decision of the Bundestag on July 3, 1979: after almost 20 years of debate on the prosecution of Nazi crimes, parliament decided that murder and genocide were no longer subject to a statute of limitations.
"If the Germans had passed the 1954 law in 1979, prosecutors and courts would have reviewed the cases of thousands of Nazi criminals. But many judges were former members of the Nazi party, so they would have been lenient towards them," Klarsfeld explains.
Former secretary in concentration camp - a symbol of late justice
Leniency has also been a recent trend for many cogs in the Nazi killing machine. For example, Irmgard Furchner died in February at the age of 99. The former secretary at the Stutthof concentration camp was found guilty in 2022 of being an accessory to murder in more than 10.000 cases. The case was initiated by Chief State Attorney Thomas Will, who has been head of the Main Office of the Provincial Judicial Administration for the Clarification of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg for five years.
He tells DW: "Our task is still to find people against whom proceedings can still be taken. We are still investigating concentration camps. For each camp, there are still many people who could be alive, but whom we have not yet been able to find." But there are fewer and fewer people who are eligible for persecution. "Realistically, only the years 1925 to 1927, possibly 1928, are still eligible," explains Will.
The difficult search for the last living perpetrators
A former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, now 100 years old, has been charged in the Hanau regional court with being an accessory to murder in more than 3.300 cases. Finding these Nazi criminals almost 80 years after the end of the war poses a huge challenge for Will and his team. The availability of personal data, including place and date of birth, is more the exception than the rule. And the less data there is, the less likely the search will be successful. "For example, finding a Karl Müller without additional information is almost impossible," says Will.
Since the Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes began operations on December 1, 1958, 1,78 million cards with data on individuals, crime scenes and unit affiliations have been collected. Almost 19.000 proceedings have been initiated by public prosecutors and courts in Germany. But the search is not only conducted in Germany, but also worldwide, with the help of the Schengen Information System and Interpol. Because many Nazi criminals emigrated.
Criminal prosecution does not stop, because murder does not expire.
But how much more sense does it make to bring centenarians, who are often declared unfit to stand trial, to trial? Thomas Will often hears this question and has a clear answer: "The verdict itself is already very important because, even though it is late, it establishes criminal responsibility and guilt. It is impossible to emphasize enough how important this is to the relatives of the victims."
Will also criticizes the fact that there have been too few convictions for Nazi criminals in Germany since the end of World War II 80 years ago. One reason for this was the general criminal law, which was inadequate for prosecuting mass crimes ordered by the state, Will explains. He adds that, in addition, the basic position was initially that on the one hand there were the main perpetrators who were responsible for everything, and on the other hand, the deluded accomplices of National Socialism.
Chief State Prosecutor Thomas Will concludes: "First, social relations had to change. But there is no doubt that even then there could and should have been more verdicts. It is therefore important to understand the work of the Main Office and the numerous documents that have been produced since then as testimony to the way in which post-war society dealt with its Nazi past."
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