woensdag 24 juli 2013

Nazi hunting campaign kicks off in Germany



Two thousand placards have been plastered across German cities, including Berlin, with Two thousand placards have been plastered across German cities, including Berlin, with the intention of trapping the dregs of Germany's Nazi war criminals. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is seeking information on Holocaust perpetrators still at large.

The posters depict an ominous photograph of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi-run death camp, with a tagline that reads: Late, but not too late.

Millions of innocents were murdered by Nazi war criminals. Some of the perpetrators are free and alive, the posters continue. Help us to bring them before a court.

One former war criminal, Ivan Demjanjuk, was convicted as late as 2011. Demjanjuk was a concentration camp survivor found guilty of complicity in some 30,000 Jewish deaths in German-occupied Poland during World War II. He is being cited as an example by the center as a reason for people not to rest on their laurels when it comes to catching remaining war criminals.

This conviction paves the way for additional prosecutions of individuals who served in death camps, as well as the members of the Einsatzgruppen [mobile killing units], stated the center's chief Nazi-hunter and Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is dismissive of anyone who questions the value of bringing elderly war criminals to justice, listing five points for the apprehensive observer to take into consideration, two of which are: The passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the killers, and old age should not afford immunity to murderers.

Zuroff is adamant that remaining Nazi war criminals should be made to face up to their actions regardless of the passage of decades since the close of World War II.

In my 33 years of hunting Nazis I never once had a case of a Nazi who ever said he was sorry, Zuroff told AFP. These are the last people on Earth deserving any sympathy because they had absolutely no sympathy for their victims.

Two cases earlier this year saw two men in their 90s charged with their role in enabling mass atrocities to take place. In June, Laszlo Lajos Csatari, 98, was charged in Hungary with organizing the deportation of some 12,000 Jews to death camps while a former Auschwitz guard named Hans Lipschis, 93, was arrested in Germany under suspicion of complicity in mass murder.

Source: worldnewsviews

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter of Simon Wiesenthal Center