Cold Case

Justice, so they say, never sleeps. Now, hundreds of Nazi war criminals who thought the world had forgotten their crimes are about to be reminded of it.

Following the conviction of concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk, who lived for decades in the United States before his crimes were revealed, the German prosecutor's office dedicated to finding and prosecuting Nazi war criminals is reopening hundreds of previously abandoned cases.

According to an AP report, the German prosecutor's believe that this is an urgent matter, given the passage of time and the fact that many of the suspects will soon be dead.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, founded by the late world-famous Nazi-hunter, is also getting involved.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center's top Nazi-hunter, Efraim Zuroff, told the AP he would launch a new campaign in the next two months – a successor to his Operation Last Chance – to track down the remaining Nazi war criminals.

He said the Demjanjuk conviction has opened the door to prosecutions that he had never thought possible in the past.

"It could be a very interesting final chapter," he said by telephone from Jerusalem. "This has tremendous implications even at this late date."

The pursuit of Nazi war criminals has a long and sometimes shameful history. Following the Nuremburg trials, neither divided Germany nor the great powers had much interest in further prosecutions, and the necessity of building up East and West Germany as bulworks of the Cold War rendered the pursuit of justice almost impossible.

It was not until the Eichmann trial pushed the issue back into the world spotlight that momentum that this began to change, resulting not only in criminal trials but also lawsuits for the recovery of Jewish assets and personal reparations to survivors of the Holocaust.

Now, it appears that both Germany and dedicated Jewish Nazi-hunters are about to write the final chapter in this almost century-long pursuit of justice.

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