He is 86. During his time in the unit, which ended in September 1943, he would have been at most 21 years old, and during the executions in Belgrade he would have been 19. He is alleged to have been a guard and an interpreter. Think of it: You are young. Times are tough. Government officials older than you give you a job as a guard. They say, “These are dangerous criminals and enemies of the state. Your job is to guard them. From time to time you may be asked to interpret. It is your duty to do this. If you refuse, there will be serious consequences to you.” Are you mature enough to figure out your moral responsibility and refuse the job? Or desert?

Of course, guards may do horrible things. You can imagine such things, but what you cannot do in our legal system is convict a person of a crime without evidence specific to him. It is one of the differences between our system and, for example, the Nazi system.

From the story, it seems that the Justice Department is not trying to convict Egner of a crime, but to strip him of his citizenship and deport him. The grounds are that when he filled out his citizenship papers in the mid-1960s he didn’t say he’d been a member of the SPSS. Omitting information on a U.S. government form 45 years ago is lot easier to prove than a war crime in Eastern Europe 67 years ago, but in itself it is not worth all this effort and attention.

I am not defending the SPSS, the Einsatzgruppe or the Nazis. I am not vouching for Peter Egner's innocence, because I have no way of knowing it. I just wonder if anyone at this late date has any way of knowing his guilt.