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Germany is seeking the arrest of John Demjanjuk, a retired auto mechanic suspected of being concentration camp guard Ivan the Terrible, who participated in the torture and murder of 29,000 people, mostly Jewish, at Treblinka and Sobibor.

Stripped of his U.S. citizenship for lying on his immigration application in the ’50s, Demjanjuk lives as a stateless alien because no other country will take him. Now the Germans would like to take a shot at making the charges stick in a case in which Israeli prosecutors failed to get a conviction.

Given all that, and the fact that the man is already 88 years old, does this really make sense? In cases like this, is it time to say “enough is enough” and move on, or should we and our governments continue to search for old Nazis and prosecute them when we find them?

You bet we should. But frankly, I sometimes struggle with why I feel that way.

In light of the many challenges we already face in dealing with people currently engaged in mass murder around the world, does it make sense to keep fighting the last century’s wars? At some point, can’t we figure out how to let go of the fight without forgetting that it happened and that it must not be repeated? Might it not be more appropriate to stop worrying about one old man, or even a small bunch of them scattered powerlessly across the globe, and instead fight against those who follow actively in their footsteps?

As much as I believe in the importance of asking those questions, and appreciate how too often we fight the past wars as an excuse for not fighting harder in the current ones, I cannot get away from the fact that in the case of Ivan the Terrible, and those like him, we must not let go of the fight.

Too many Web sites that seek to exonerate him are just a click away on Google. Too many people equate letting people like Demjanjuk go with forgetting what he is accused of having done. And if we did it properly, the search for the murderers of the past would provoke us to redouble our efforts to prosecute the genocidal maniacs of the present.

The prosecution of old Nazis could actually propel us to a new level of Holocaust awareness, one which is necessary as we enter a generation that has no direct experience with either the victims or the perpetrators.

Those who see such prosecutions as “needlessl clinging to the past” will come to appreciate that the past is never in the past as long as there are victims who carry the scars of its atrocities. And those who favor pursuing the last few Demjanjuks will do so in order to heighten public awareness of all genocide, not because we believe they are all the same, but because we believe that they must all be stopped.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is the president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. A version of this piece first appeared on his blog, Windows & Doors, on Beliefnet.com.

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