Removing the Obstacle of Soviet Cover

In most countries there is no statute of limitations on the prosecution of World War II war crimes. But in countless cases prosecutions have been made impossible by certain governments’ indifference or protectiveness toward war criminals, or because mortality has carried off those who engaged in atrocities or those who could bear witness against them. As a result thousands who had a hand in the most barbarous crimes of the Nazi era--not all of them Germans, by any means--have been able to evade justice. Probably most of those who have survived will go to their graves having escaped all temporal punishment. Most, but not all.

The Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations is charged with identifying Nazi war criminals who entered the United States illegally. Established only 13 years ago--a delay that is yet another example of governmental indifference--the OSI expects this year to file a record number of charges in war-crimes cases. Neil M. Sher, who heads the office, credits this to newly available access to files compiled long ago in the former Soviet Union. For more than a decade U.S. officials have been able to see some material from those files. But only recently have OSI researchers enjoyed full and direct access. The evidence they are finding is expected to lead to the filing of at least eight cases against suspected Nazi war criminals this year.

The Justice Department can’t prosecute for war crimes committed in other countries. But it can prosecute those whose entry into the United States was illegal because they lied about their Nazi connections and wartime activities. Conviction in such cases can result in a loss of citizenship and deportation, sometimes to a country where war-crimes charges are pending.

The great pity is that Soviet officials chose to delay for so long in fully sharing war-crimes information with other countries. While the Soviet files remained effectively sealed, scores if not hundreds of identified but undetected war criminals were apparently able to live safely and comfortably around the world, the truth about their pasts unrevealed.

What explains the Soviet behavior? Some of it may have been motivated by a traditional institutional distaste for cooperating in any way with democratic countries. Some of it may have been prompted by concern that if it opened its Nazi-crimes files, the Soviet Union would quickly find itself subject to demands that it provide information about its own extensive involvement in crimes against humanity.

Whatever the reason, Moscow’s official silence and non-cooperation apparently allowed many who committed terrible crimes to go unpunished. Only now, so woefully late, are amends being made.