Why have it taken so long to prosecute former Nazi’s, that we still see cases popping up today?
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There are a few reasons. A lot of former Nazis hid their identities and escaped to countries where they were not easy to identify, such as Argentina. However, the main reason for the recent prosecutions is that Germany changed what had to be proven to convict someone. Between 1949 and 1985, there were 200,000 investigations and 120,000 indictments of former Nazis in Germany, but less than 7,000 convictions. Those convictions required that a prosecutor prove a person’s role in a specific murder.
The German government changed its policy on Nazi war criminals around the year 2000, allowing prosecutions of Nazis who served in death camps or mobile killing units, based on their service alone, and not their role in any specific murder. As a result, former Nazis would couldn’t be convicted before can be convicted now.
So a number of people who were investigated and cleared are now being prosecuted because of this lower burden of proof. As far as identifying former Nazis who escaped, that happens at an increasingly less frequent rate because the majority have died at this point.
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