Who shall answer for evil, and how long must that answer await justice? How shall justice be done?
Recently, in Germany, a 98-year-old former Nazi prison-camp guard was captured and will stand trial.
A 98-year-old former Nazi concentration guard has been indicted on charges of aiding and abetting the murder of more than 3,300 people during the Holocaust, German authorities said on Friday.
The man’s name was not made public by prosecutors, in accordance with German privacy laws.
The public prosecutor in the western city of Giessen, near Frankfurt, said in a statement that the man worked at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp between 1943 and 1945.
The man, who was a minor at the time of the alleged crimes, is accused of “having assisted in the cruel and insidious killing of thousands of prisoners,” prosecutors said.
The man will face a juvenile court because he was under the age of 18 when he served at Sachsenhausen. The statement added that the trial is expected to be in Hanau, close to the man’s home, in accordance with juvenile law.
One might argue that this elderly Nazi probably won't live to see his trial concluded, that his life span is probably measured in weeks and that at this distance in time, there is little to gain for the German government in prosecuting him. And sure as the Nazis committed these heinous acts, there will be those who plead for clemency, claiming this elderly Nazi might be spared due to his age, because of his life since 1945. But that is a miscarriage of justice.
Evil must be answered for. Justice must be done. No matter how long it takes, no matter how old the evil-doer has grown, no matter what has transpired in the meantime, evil must be answered for. Even for me, a staunch minarchist, this is one of the (few) legitimate roles of government. Justice must be done, in this case as in many others.
...Last year, another former Sachsenhausen guard, aged 101, was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted for aiding and abetting the murder of 3,518 people during the Holocaust.
A 96-year-old German woman fled before standing trial for crimes she was alleged to have committed while working as a stenographer and typist in the commandant’s office at the concentration camp in Stutthof, near what is now the Polish city of Gdansk. She was later found by local authorities and brought before court, where she was convicted on similar charges.
Again, an elderly Nazi; again, the same question was doubtlessly asked.
Evil must be answered for. Justice must be done.
That justice must not be distracted or deferred. No "past injustices," nor "societal causes" should be cited as mitigation, nor should justice be distracted by blaming inanimate objects. The sword cannot be blamed for the hand that wields it; as my colleague Jeff Charles has repeatedly documented, swords and other weapons can serve the cause of justice as well as evil. And it makes no difference if the evil was perpetrated under orders from a military or civilian authority, or by a criminal acting alone.
Government has two legitimate purposes: To protect our liberty and to protect our property. Evil threatens both of those things, no matter in what cause it cloaks itself. Evil may manifest itself in genocide or in robbery; in malware and fraud; in spousal abuse or in medical malpractices. But it remains, no matter the scale or scope, evil.
Evil must be answered for. Justice must be done.
When facing evil, only justice can protect us. Without justice, no civil society is possible. Justice must be blind, it must treat all equally, and it must make evil acts unappealing to would-be evildoers, no matter how long it takes, no matter how long the perpetrator has evaded justice. We have lost much of this in our American system of 'justice,' though, and it is unclear as to how we might reclaim it. But the principle, as principles do, remains in place. And because of that, as in the many cases Mr. Charles has documented, we citizens do retain the right in extremis to defend ourselves from evil, and that, too, is a form of justice.
So, this captured Nazi is 98. So, he was very young when he served in an extermination camp. That matters not a jot. He is still accountable for those acts if his trial should establish his guilt. Evil must be answered for, no matter how long it takes. There always has been and always will be evil in the world. There must be justice, so the guilty may be held accountable for their evil. Justice must be done, no matter what has transpired in the interim. And most importantly, evil must be remembered by the good, lest we run the risk of having it arise amongst us again.
Evil must be answered for. Justice must be done.
