Robert Verkaik: The need for justice is more urgent than ever

The sight of frail old men being dragged into court to face up to crimes committed decades ago usually raises searching questions about the purpose of justice.

In such cases lawyers often talk about the quality of mercy and argue that justice delayed is justice denied. But when those crimes involve the mass extermination of another race, few believe that the age, or even the health, of the perpetrators should protect them from the full force of the law.

For this reason the Nazi architects and executioners of Hitler's Final Solution have always held a unique place in the criminal justice systems of the world.

Samuel Kunz, 89, had been third on a most-wanted list drawn up by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem.

His death before he could be put on trial has not only cheated his victims and their families of their own justice but serves as a reminder of the need for expediency in settling the last cases against the Nazis.

Kunz was indicted on charges which linked him to almost every stage of the killing process at the Belzec death camp, including taking Jews from trains, leading them into gas chambers, to throwing corpses into mass graves. Efraim Zuroff, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's top Nazi hunter, said it was important that Kunz had been indicted, even if it was "incredibly frustrating" that he had died before being brought to trial. "At least a small measure of justice was achieved," said Mr Zuroff.

Kunz was charged in July but no date had been fixed for his trial.

Evidence against him came to light last year when prosecutors were preparing for the upcoming trial of 90-year-old John Demjanjuk, a retired car worker who lived in Ohio and is charged with murdering nearly 28,000 people at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.

When John Demjanjuk stepped into court last year it was almost 21 years after he was initially charged with war crimes. Demjanjuk was first put on trial in Israel in 1988. In 2001 prosecutors again accused him of serving as a guard at the Sobibor and Majdanek camps in Poland and the Flossenbürg camp in Germany. His deportation was ordered in 2005 but he remained in the US as no country would accept him. On 7 May 2009, the US Supreme Court rejected Demjanjuk's appeal and he was ordered to surrender to US Immigration agents for deportation to Germany.

For the sake of the millions of victims of the Nazi genocide, justice must no longer be delayed.