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'No expiry date' for justice, says key lawyer on WWII Nazi trials
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In this file photo taken on February 29, 2016, prosecutor Thomas Walther (C), who is representing co-plaintiff and Auschwitz survivor Walter Plywaski (not in picture), speaks to reporters on the first day of the trial against former SS medic Hubert Zafke, accused of aiding in 3,681 murders in Auschwitz in 1944, at the regional court of Neubrandenburg. (AFP/John MacDougall)
L
awyer Thomas Walther, 78, gets prickly when he hears criticism of German courts putting elderly surviving Nazis -- many over 90 years old now -- on trial.
"No one voices any doubts when charges are filed over a murder after 30 years," he tells AFP.
"But the prosecution of old men and old women is somehow viewed as problematic after 75 years, even if it's about 1,000 or 5,000 murders in which active assistance was provided by the accused."
Justice has "no expiry date", stresses the lawyer, who has led the way on a series of twilight justice cases in Germany against the last surviving Nazis.
It was due to a case Walther put before the courts in the early 2000s that jurisprudence was set in 2011, allowing investigators to prosecute Nazi staff on the basis they had served as part of Adolf Hitler's extermination machine.
On Thursday, another of his cases will reach court.
The trial of Josef S., now 100 years old, accused of complicity in the murder of 3,518 prisoners between 1942 and 1945 at Sachsenhausen concentration camp will open. Walther is representing survivors of the horrors and their relatives.
