THE Poles have demanded the extradition of an American who they say is a former SS officer responsible for the murder of civilians in two Polish villages in 1944. It may seem remarkable that at this great distance in time there could be any alleged Nazi killers still alive. But the accused man, Michael Karkoc, originally from the Ukraine, is now 98 years old.
This is not the first time that Karkoc has been accused. German prosecutors launched an investigation in 2013 but after two years concluded that he was not fit to stand trial. This has not however dissuaded Polish investigators who are now demanding that Karkoc be extradited from his home in Minnesota to stand trial for crimes committed all of 73 years ago.
Given his age, it is improbable that this man will survive the legal wrangling that is likely to take place over his extradition, let alone any actual subsequent trial. There will also be the claim that he is simply not fit to stand trial. In addition lawyers will argue that those witnesses who have also survived until now, will probably not be capable of giving evidence and that anyway, the testimony that they do provide will be based on the unreliable recall of events that took place over seven decades ago. All in all therefore it seems certain that any trial that does take place is going to be unsatisfactory from a legal and evidential point of view.
But such a trial, so long after the event, of a man so very advanced in years also has a moral dimension. Is it right for society to shrug its shoulders and say that it is really far too late to be pursuing this old man and that his trial will serve no useful purpose? The answer surely is that if the evidence is as good as the Poles insist, then it is absolutely essential that Karkoc is extradited from his home in the US to stand trial in Poland. It is morally indefensible to ignore this crime.
The problem is that the victorious allies set a precedent in 1946. Captured top Nazis were tried in Nuremberg and all but a handful were found guilty of horrific crimes and executed. There followed the trials of concentration camp commanders and guards with more executions. But the wider prosecution of Germans knowingly complicit in the savageries of Hitler’s campaign against Jews, gypsies and the physically and mentally disabled, the murder of Soviet commissars and the many other crimes committed during the war, never happened. Only a few high profile cases were prosecuted. Instead the victorious Allies relied on a program of de-Nazification which sounded impressive but quickly proved to be an excuse to move on and bring an end to awkward and time consuming further investigations. Thus leading Nazis in many walks of life remerged in the new democratic West Germany, though only rarely in high profile roles.
In the last 20 years, a flurry of German prosecutions of former camp guards and most recently an Auschwitz bookkeeper have seen old men sent way to spend their final days in a prison cell. On each occasion, the defense argued that they were too old to be tried. They were unsuccessful for the very good reason that no Nazi crime can ever be too old to be forgotten.
