Nazi hunters run against time

BERLIN — Jerusalem-based Nazi hunters, engaged in a race against time to find and prosecute World War II criminals before they die of old age, say they are frustrated that some European governments have not shown the same sense of urgency.

German authorities appear to have given up trying to bring the former Nazis to justice, while Austria has become “a paradise for war criminals,” said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.

“In Germany, they are treating these cases as if they have all the time in the world to reach a verdict and that’s simply not the case,” said Mr. Zuroff, who heads the Wiesenthal Center’s Operation Last Chance pursuit of the war criminals, most of whom are now in their 90s.

Austria has the worst record in the hunt for the perpetrators, he said.

“If you compare the number of people involved, the potential for prosecution and what’s been done, Austria is just a total embarrassment.”

Mr. Zuroff was encouraged, however, by the response from South America. Argentina, Brazil and Chile have passed along hundreds of leads since the start of the Operation Last Chance campaign in that region in November, boosting hopes that at least some of the center”s 10 most-wanted can still be brought to trial.

Topping that list is Alois Brunner, who would be 95 if he is alive. Brunner was an assistant to Adolf Eichmann, a key Holocaust architect who was captured by Israeli agents in Argentina and hanged in 1962 after a trial in Israel.

Brunner, accused of deporting more than 100,000 Jews to death camps, has been living in Syria for decades. He was convicted in absentia in France, but Syria has refused to cooperate in prosecuting him.

Mr. Zuroff said Brunner was last seen at the Meridien Hotel in Damascus six years ago.

Others on the list include Aribert Heim, “Dr. Death,” now 93, an Austrian medical doctor in the SS Nazi police who served in several concentration camps including Mauthausen, Austria, where he is accused of having killed hundreds of inmates.

He was arrested by American troops in 1945 and held for more than 2½ years but never prosecuted. He worked as a gynecologist in Germany until 1962, when he fled after reportedly getting a tip about his impending arrest.

There have been reported sightings of him in Egypt, Spain, Argentina and other locations, and the Wiesenthal Center thinks he is still alive.

The list also includes former Danish SS officer Soren Kam, 86, who lives in Bavaria, and who reportedly helped in the deportation of 500 Danish Jews to concentration camps.

German authorities have turned down an extradition request from the Danish government on suspicion that Kam took part in the murder of Nazi journalist Carl Henrik Clemmensen in Copenhagen in 1943. The Danish Justice Ministry has said it could file new charges in connection with the deportation of Jews.

Operation Last Chance, begun by the center in Europe in 2002, offers financial rewards for information that helps the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.

It has yielded the names of 488 suspects from 20 countries, 99 of whom have been submitted to local prosecutors. This information has resulted in three arrest warrants, two extradition requests and dozens of ongoing investigations, Mr. Zuroff said.

He announced this week that the reward for information was being raised to $25,000 from $10,000 with money provided by a U.S. Jewish donor. The reward for Heim’s capture is about $460,000 — funded with about $190,000 each from the German government and the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the remaining $74,000 from Austria.

Mr. Zuroff said Operation Last Chance was also targeting lower-ranking people who facilitated the Holocaust, not just in Austria and Germany but also in Eastern Europe.

“In every single country, they had many, many local helpers, in countries in Eastern Europe these helpers actually participated in murder. Some of these people were relatively young at the time. With the advances of modern medicine, people live longer, and consequently many of them are alive and healthy enough to be put on trial,” Mr. Zuroff said.

Mr. Zuroff rejected the argument that the perpetrators are now too old to stand trial.

“The passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrator. If we were to set a chronological limit to prosecution, we would be saying that you could get away with genocide, which is morally outrageous.”