And I have a problem with that, as well.

The reason we're trying to put him to death now, is pathological and hypocritical. You even intimated you thought prison guards should be put to death. That's vengeance and I don't see the purpose it serves.

Well, I might agree, that crimes like rape should expire after some time.

But war crimes / crimes against humanity?

Warlords can hide for entire decades from justice. The reason why they don't expire is simple. "You should think twice, because we will find you and hunt you down even after fifty years". Also, some bloody regimes last long enough for such crimes to expire. Tyrants are brought to justice often only after political system change, and it always takes many years

It might be collocated with vengenace, but heck. These crimes are so horrible, world should never forget about them.

Now you're talking about the people nominally "in charge", even assuming it's somehow justified, for the reasons you gave, against the "tyrants" and such, why seek this level of vengeance on people who may amount to flunkies? Prison guards? People that they aren't even quite sure who they are and what they might have done because the records are terribly unclear?

I agree, the guy was in his 90s and there is no sense in trying him for a crime that was committed by a political system 70 years ago.

And another thing, wasn't he Ukrainian? Weren't the Nazis as quick to kill the Slavs as they were to kill Jews? It's unfortunately ignored in the West that more Slavic peoples were killed in the Ethnic cleansing than Jews. Even if there were doubts about his identity a DNA test can tell if he is Slavic or Germanic. I know that doesn't make him innocent but it makes it less believable that he was the one ordering the executions.

Edit: typo

Again, I think it's to send a message. If you're participating in war crimes, not matter how small your actions were, you will be caught

Parvateshwar you kiddin? Many prison guards, people who were seeking and going after Jews to send them to concentration camps were Jews themselves.

How this makes it less believable? Not only Germans were working for III Reich death machine.

Ukraine had a movement of freedom fighters which often sided with Nazis to fight against the Soviets. They're still revered in West Ukraine (just like Nazis can be seen as liberators from the Soviet regime in Baltic states) which leads to clashes between factions that wish to honor the dead on either side of the front line. It's quite easy to film both pro- and anti-Russian reports in Ukraine, just pick either the Western or the Easter part of the country.

The problem is, whether what you're doing is a "war crime" or not is going to based on what the winner of said war thinks, and they're already likely to not exactly be "on your side". The additional problem of moving this down the ranks of "power", so to speak, is that it doesn't take very long before these people didn't have a lot of power: follow orders or be put to death/imprisoned and tortured now. You posit it as if they had absolute choice, and they did, if you consider Sophie's Choice to be a valid choice, I don't.

great to see this nazi-fucker going.

Sadly, I need to agree with you. This is why G.W. Bush is still among the living.

anyway, for the part "follow orders or be put to death/imprisoned and tortured now" every adult man should bare the consequences of his own choices. This is how morality works. You CHOSE to kill people then to save yourself - you face the consequences now, because your regime lost the war.

Sadly he's hardly the only one, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think he'd perpetrated crimes against the American people and abroad as well.

This is the one thing that did not happen at KZs. With a few exceptions like Martschenko maybe. But if someone was caught with having raped, his future was over.

A number of Eastern Front camp guards were Ukrainian. Some wanted to get as far away from Stalin as possible, so they figured buddying up with his enemy was a good way to do that. Some joined in because they hoped it might bring them a benefit. Some had opinions regarding the Jews that very much mirrored those of the Nazis. And towards the end, a lot of them 'joined' at gunpoint.

Witchhunt much?

I watched this case for a time as it concerned a retired auto worker not far from where I live.

The evidence was suspect right from the beginning, as it relied upon supposedly leaked documents from behind the iron curtain, with no way to verify their veracity. Even eyewitnesses who were incarcerated in the camp testified that he was not 'Ivan the Terrible', but he was ultimately found guilty of falsifying his past on US immigration papers and subsequently deported.

My interest waned, he was tried in Israel, found guilty, but subsequently had his conviction overturned. Was he a guard, I think so, but just a low level cog put to work by an occupying force. Not unusual at all, and I was quite surprised that he was put on trial yet again, but given the sensitivity of the alleged crimes, it this time found a judicial system in Germany where it is probably least likely that he would get a fair trial.

It is not because of the judicial system in Germany itself, but because of the nature of the charges and the political climate in determining otherwise. If the Israeli's let him go, that said something. It is kind if like Eliot Ness testifying that you are not guilty of bootlegging!

All this aside, he is dead, his family finally getting a rest from decades of battles, and the truth and/or justice of his life meted out on another plane, one of God or public discourse, depending upon your belief system.