This SOB needs to be punished. Not so much because a few days, weeks, months or a couple of years will make up for what he did (it won’t), but so that every other person who even thinks about doing something of like kind in the future will know that the rest of the world DOES care, and WILL hunt them down even when they are old bastards. It is much more about deterring the same thing from happening again, and less about actual punishment.
I cannot comment on this particular case, as the guard was the equivalent rank of Feldwebel and so might have had some responsibility beyond the 18 year old private. But the article below seems to indicate this has a lot more to do with keeping lawyers employed in a NAZI hunter unit than it does with justice.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-nazi-guard-trial-auschwitz-20160210-story.html
Going after a women who was a radio operator seems kind of........well not justice considering how many real 40 year old NAZIs were let go in the late 1940s.
Also if this becomes an international precedent, I see it being used against us in 50 to 60 years, when American soldiers who were 18 year old guards at Gitmo, Begram, or Abu-Ghraid are tried for “crimes”. Now before folks get their panties in an uproar I am not saying crimes were committed by 20 year old soliders, but there certainly were some questionably actions taken, and how they are viewed in 50 years might be very different from today. Most of us will not be around then, but the idea that 20 year old kids outer fence guards might be prosecuted because of what was done inside a facility by folks who by that time have escaped judgment does not seem fair or just.
That said in this case one doe not know if this sentence is just or not, not enough detail has been published to know one way or another. But something smells about it.
We've been chasing, prosecuting and jailing old Nazis for decades. Continental Europe yawns and anti-Semitism creeps steadily upward, year after year. Are these cases worth the effort? I think they are, but it's more about going on record about who we are and what we believe.
We can't count on any measurable deterrence factor, people who would commit those vile acts are predisposed to ignore such factors. In the old days when pickpockets were hanged in the town square, other pickpockets often worked the assembled crowd.