# The hunt for the last Nazis - BBC News



## Yrys (24 Mar 2009)

The hunt for the last Nazis

The race






_Efforts to bring war criminals to justice 
faltered as the Cold War set in_


The US has deported to Austria a former Nazi death camp guard, Josias Kumpf. The move 
sheds light on the continuing search - in some countries, at least - for World War II war 
criminals. Mario Cacciottolo examines a hunt now entering its final phase. "Looking for Nazi 
war criminals is the ultimate law enforcement race against the clock."

Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the United States, 
has a list of thousands of suspects. But working out whether any of them are alive and in 
the US is a laborious job. A full check could take 100 years at current rates, he says - but 
in 10 years "the World War II biological clock will come to an end".

Contrary to popular belief, most former Nazis did not go into hiding after the war. Most did 
not even change their name. There were some - such as Adolf Eichmann, who planned the 
transport of Jews to death camps, and Dr Joseph Mengele, Auschwitz's "Angel of Death" - 
who slipped away amid the post-war chaos and assumed false identities.

But the majority simply took off their uniforms, went home, and got a job. And for a crucial 
period in the 1950s, little was done to track them down, experts say.

*Justice 'not done'*

"More could have been done, but there was a lack of political will. Not from 1945 to 1948, 
but after that," says Jean-Marc Dreyfus, lecturer in Holocaust studies at the University of 
Manchester. "Around 1953 the Nazi trials stopped, and it's important to note that the Cold 
War was the reason why. "The West needed a strong West Germany and did not want to 
spend time hunting for Nazis, many of which were now part of the society and even the 
Federal Republic government.

"Removing those individuals would have weakened the nation, and for the West it was 
more important by then to have a strong West German position against Russia. "There 
were doctors, engineers, the army, who were all involved in Nazism and who were left 
to carry on after the war ended. The Allies even dealt with the same army generals 
that Hitler did."

In the 1950s and 1960s, the German judge and prosecutor Fritz Bauer estimated there 
were 100,000 Germans who were responsible in one way or another for mass killings 
of Jews. Other estimates suggested as many as 300,000. Bauer also said less than 
5,000 people had been prosecuted, which amounts to a "tear drop in the ocean" according 
to Dr Dreyfus. "Based on these estimates, justice has not been done."

*Turning point*

But in the 1970s there was a shift in Holocaust consciousness, a demand from the public 
to know more about it.

As the second generation began to question what their parents did in the war, and historians 
began to ask questions about governments and their policies toward Jews, so too did interest 
in war crimes increase. 

"The turning point was around 1976 to 1978, and with this increase in consciousness, it was 
then considered that the Nazis should be hunted once again. "Before then, there wasn't the 
kind of interest that there is today," Dr Dreyfus says.

Professor David Cesarani, author of Justice Delayed, a book that explains how the UK came 
to grant citizenship to numerous Nazi collaborators from Eastern Europe in the post-war years, 
says both Britain and the US knowingly recruited war criminals to fight the Cold War. Recently 
declassified US documents show US intelligence often hunted Nazi war criminals in order to use 
them, rather than to bring them to justice, he says.

"It had far more information than it disclosed to investigators or prosecutors. As a result, key 
Nazi personnel involved in genocide and atrocities went free for decades - if they were ever 
caught," he told the BBC. He agrees that enthusiasm for Nazi-hunting picked up in the 1970s, 
attributing this partly to the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1960-61 and a renewed interest in the 
Holocaust among academics and writers that the trial helped to generate.

*Simon Wiesenthal*

During the years that Western countries did little to identify former Nazi war criminals in their 
midst, however, private investigators fought a tireless battle. Simon Wiesenthal, who founded 
the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre in Austria in 1947, and contributed to the capture 
of Eichmann, also helped track down Franz Murer "the Butcher of Vilnius"; Erich Rajakowitsch, 
responsible for transporting Dutch Jews to the death camps; Franz Stangl, the commandant of 
the Treblinka and Sobibor death camps; Karl Silberbauer, the gestapo officer who arrested 
Anne Frank, and many others.

A generation younger, Serge and Beate Klarsfeld pursued Nazis and collaborators who had 
played leading roles in occupied France. They also carried out daring stunts to open West G
erman eyes to the war criminals living in respectable society, and sometimes in positions of 
power.

A centre named in honour of Simon Wiesenthal continues today to search for surviving Nazis 
and monitor the performance of national governments. Its last annual report in April 2008 
noted that there were 608 investigations under way across the world, and that 76 convictions 
had been achieved in the preceding seven years. It gave the USA an A grade for its efforts to 
bring Nazis to trial, an accolade that no other country has achieved. The UK, which received a 
C as recently as 2001 - for "minimal success that could have been greater" - had dropped to 
the X category, indicating that it "failed to take any action whatsoever to investigate suspected 
Nazi war criminals".

*'Most wanted'*

The work carried out in America by the OSI involves a team of historians examining archives 
that contain 70,000 names - including 40,000 "senior core SS officers" - and then matching 
them against lists of US residents. Once a match is found, an investigation can begin. The 
result, if a war criminal is successfully prosecuted, is denaturalisation and deportation or 
extradition. 

*NAZI WAR CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS 2001-2008*
United States: 37
Italy: 26
Canada: 6
Germany: 3
Lithuania: 2
Poland: 1
France: 1
_Source: Simon Wiesenthal Center (figures include 
denaturalisations, deportations and extraditions) _


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## Yrys (24 Mar 2009)

The hunt for the last Nazis

'Most Wanted'

Each year the Simon Wiesenthal Center publishes a list of its most wanted surviving Nazi suspects. 
They are "wanted" because they have not been punished, even if they have been tried. In some 
cases it is unclear whether they are still alive. They remain on the list until it is proven that they 
are dead.

*SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER'S MOST WANTED LIST*





*Milivoj Asner*: Former Croatian police chief, accused of role in deporting hundreds to their 
deaths. Indicted in Croatia. Born 1913.

_*Heinrich Boere*: Accused of murdering three Dutch civilians. Sentenced to death in absentia 
in Holland in 1949. Indicted in Germany in 2008 but case dropped on medical grounds. Born 1921._

*Alois Brunner*: Commander of Paris internment camp, deported thousands to death camps. 
Last seen in Syria. Possibly dead. Born 1912.

_*Algimantas Dailide*: Arrested Jews who were later murdered by Nazi collaborators in Lithuania.
Deported from US. Convicted by Lithuania and sentenced to jail - but sentence was not carried out. 
Born 1921._

*John (Ivan) Demjanjuk*: Accused of participating in mass murder at Sobibor death camp. 
Germany seeking extradition from US. Born 1920.

_*Mikhail Gorshkow*: Accused of participating in murder of Jews. Denaturalised in US, under 
investigation in Estonia. Born 1923._

*Aribert Heim*: Doctor who experimented on prisoners at Mauthausen camp. Possibly dead. 
Personal papers recently found in Egypt. Born 1914.

_*Soeren Kam*: Accused of murdering anti-Nazi newspaper editor. Indicted in Denmark. 
Born 1921._

*Sandor Kepiro*: Accused of mass murder of civilians at Novi Sad, Serbia. Convicted but 
never punished in Hungary in 1944. Born 1914.

_*Harry Mannil*: Accused of arresting Jews and Communists who were later murdered by Estonian
Nazi collaborators. Cleared by Estonian investigation but barred from entry to US. Born 1921._

*Karoly (Charles) Zentai*: Accused of participating in persecution and murder of Jews. Currently 
appealing against extradition from Australia to Hungary. Born 1921.


_Source: Simon Wiesenthal Center_


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## Yrys (24 Mar 2009)

The hunt for the last Nazis

Right/wrong?

As the last remaining Nazis from World War II approach the end of their lives, it is 
debatable whether it is still worthwhile to pursue them. Their crimes took place more 
than 60 years ago, it is often hard to gather evidence that will secure a conviction, 
and the defendants could die before the legal process is complete.

Here, two observers put the case for and against continuing efforts to trace and 
prosecute the guilty. 


*BERNARD JOSEPHS, FREELANCE JOURNALIST*





While I understand the desire to bring these people to book, the fact is that it's for 
diminishing returns. It costs a lot of money, it involves a lot of resources for something 
which I wouldn't say was not worthwhile, but at least is questionable.

There are a lot of Holocaust survivors and families who have suffered trauma, and these 
people do need help. They need counselling, support financially and otherwise.

We have today a situation where people do question the Holocaust and whether it really 
happened. I think Holocaust education is another direction where the money should be 
spent. We have a burgeoning far right in Europe, and in the UK, and that needs to be 
addressed. 

I just feel that would be a better use of the money than putting on trial people who, in 
any case, are going to answer for their crimes in a much higher court than we have on 
earth. I think hunting these men down now is pointless, but I am absolutely furious that 
these people, at relatively early ages, were able to carry on lives as normal after the 
war. We should have hunted them down years ago.

It's pointless to hunt them down now they're in their 80s and 90s. I would rather look 
after the survivors, and get their stories on record, so that no-one can deny what 
happened. 


*BERND KOSCHLAND, MEMBER OF ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH REFUGEES*





We still have to persevere in pursuing the Nazi war criminal for a number of reasons.

They have committed crimes, so they need to be found and it needs to be logged, 
because otherwise it passes out of human knowledge. If someone is found guilty 
then the sentence is really immaterial. What matters is that justice has to be done.

Even though it happened 60-odd years ago, the effects of it on individuals are still 
there - psychologically and physically. I came to the UK in 1939, but my parents and 
several other family members died at the hands of Nazis in camps in Izbica, Poland, 
and Riga in Latvia.

Tracking Nazis down is an important lesson to demonstrate to potential modern-day 
human rights abusers that their crimes will never be tolerated. I don't think you can 
forgive these people their crimes. What you can do is build a bridge of understanding.

We can live alongside each other as long as we both remember I cannot forgive, you 
should not be able to forget, but let's build a kind of bridge between each other to make 
a better future.


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## Yrys (24 Mar 2009)

The hunt for the last Nazis

The hunter

Simon Wiesenthal was the world's most famous Nazi hunter before his retirement in 2003. 
An organisation named in his honour, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, continues his work in 
its Jerusalem office, headed by Efraim Zuroff. Here, Dr Zuroff explains why he wants to 
bring war criminals to justice, whatever their age. 

Video here (3 min 4 sec)


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## Yrys (24 Mar 2009)

The hunt for the last Nazis

'Job done'
   






 Serge Klarsfeld does not look like someone who would put a gun to a man's head.

This avuncular 73-year-old is the epitome of politeness in his large office, with a 
photocopier whirring in the corner, brightly coloured document folders stuffed in 
many shelves, and cats tiptoeing over papers and desks.

But once, in 1973, Mr Klarsfeld, brandished a pistol in the street at a former World 
War II Nazi - Kurt Lischka, wartime Gestapo chief for Jewish affairs in France who 
was living comfortably in Cologne.

This was just one of many dramatic moments in the life of Mr Klarsfeld and his wife 
Beate, who have carried out a battle over almost 40 years to seek justice for the 
Nazis' victims in France. 





_Beate and Serge Klarsfeld have 
dedicated their lives to pursuing Nazis_

This battle is now over, because either all those linked to the crimes are dead, or, 
the Klarsfelds say, there is not enough evidence to prove their guilt in court. Mr and 
Mrs Klarsfeld had already failed in a previous attempt to kidnap Lischka, who was 
instrumental in planning the deportation and subsequent murder of thousands of 
French Jews and other "enemies" of the Third Reich.

Mr Klarsfeld's ploy with the gun was designed to persuade the West German government, 
which had been refusing all calls to prosecute Lischka, to think again. "I went to Cologne 
and approached Lischka in the street. I put a gun to his forehead - he had a gun himself, 
but he just threw up his hands. The eyes of a man are terrible when he thinks he's going 
to die.   "I didn't shoot, and escaped, and then wrote to the West German government to 
say that if they did not deal with this man, then we could. We told them to do their duty 
and apply the law."

That did not happen right away, and instead a warrant was issued for both the Klarsfelds' 
arrest. But Lischka was eventually tried and convicted, in Cologne in 1980, receiving a 
10-year prison sentence.

Mr Klarsfeld's wife Beate, 70, explains there were not actually any bullets in her husband's 
revolver. The daughter of a German soldier, she left Germany in 1960 and married Serge 
in Paris in 1963, becoming a famed pursuer of Nazis in her own right.

*Confronting the past*

The couple's comfortable offices, in Paris's eighth arrondissement, are covered with 
documents and books on the Holocaust - they are piled on chairs, tables and floors.
Mr Klarsfeld explains that when they began to realise in the 1960s that former Nazis 
leading respectable lives in German society, as judges, politicians and businessmen, 
then "this was something that we could not stand". 

And so the couple dedicated their lives to the pursuit and the prosecution of former 
Nazis, by what they describe as both "legal and illegal" measures, forcing French 
people to confront the truth of their compatriots' widespread complicity in Nazi 
crimes.

Mrs Klarsfeld said the couple were not Nazi hunters, "because we didn't have to hunt 
them, we knew where they were, living openly". A lack of political will meant 
prosecutions of Nazis had dried up. "In France we changed the memory of the Vichy 
government, showed up the crimes of the Vichy, like deporting children from France," 
he said.

"We did it by providing information and research on how the Vichy co-operated with 
the Nazis. We were involved in the prosecutions of collaborators like Maurice Papon 
and Paul Touvier. "The French population forgot what had happened. In 1970 the French 
public thought those who were arrested in our country were arrested by the Germans, 
but we showed that most often it was by those in French uniforms."

*Making history*

Most famously, Mrs Klarsfeld, a German from a Christian background, publicly slapped 
the West German Chancellor Kurt-George Kiesinger in 1968, because of his former role 
as director of Nazi propaganda broadcasting, a blow that resonated around Europe and 
that helped bring about Kiesinger's fall from power. That slap is still discussed in German 
schools today, such was its significance.

Mrs Klarsfeld in particular has carried out protests over former Nazis and anti-Semitism 
in countries such as the former West Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Chile and Syria, 
mostly leading to arrests and frequently deportation. "I knew I had to go wherever the 
people were suffering," Mrs Klarsfeld said. "Sure, it could be dangerous. But if you really 
want to do something with your life, you have to do more than just speak."

The couple also tracked down the infamous Nazi Klaus Barbie, member of the Gestapo 
and known as the Butcher of Lyon. There is evidence Barbie personally tortured prisoners 
and was blamed for 4,000 deaths and a further 7,500 deportations during the war.

The Klarsfelds found Barbie in Bolivia and helped organise his extradition in 1983, after 
first conspiring to kidnap him. Mr Klarsfeld legally represented more than 120 of Barbie's 
torture victims. Barbie was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in 
1987, and died in prison in 1991. On his first court appearance he said: "All my troubles 
in the past started when Madame Klarsfeld came to Bolivia."

The Klarsfelds stopped looking for Nazis themselves after a trial in absentia of Alois 
Brunner in 2001 in Paris, which they had pressed for and in which they presented 
evidence. Brunner was sentenced to life imprisonment. Brunner is the former head of 
an Austrian SS anti-Jewish team, and the man whose orders led to Mr Klarsfeld's father 
being gassed in Auschwitz in 1943. Although Brunner could still be alive - he was once 
sighted in Syria - he would be almost 97 and both the Klarsfelds believe that he is long 
dead.

"He was ill and had been sent two letter bombs, which blinded him in one eye and took 
off most of his fingers on one hand - he undoubtedly died a long time ago," Mr Klarsfeld 
said.

Nor do the Klarsfelds expect to be dealing with any further cases of Nazi war criminals.
"You have to have documentary evidence that you can use in court, and there no longer 
is any such evidence available on anyone still alive, in France at least," Mr Klarsfeld said.

*'People like us'*

He says he always kept an emotional distance from the people he was pursuing. He didn't 
hate them. "After all, they were people like us. We spoke with some of them. They like 
animals, we like animals, for example.

"But we never met anyone who had changed, never met a former Nazi who showed remorse. 
They were only interested in their own situation and that of their family."I never felt frustrated 
if a Nazi died before we could bring him to trial. I cannot wish these people a long life."

Mrs Klarsfeld, however, takes a different view. "You can hate them. If you look at the 
documents, look at what they've done, and how they've never show remorse. Awful, awful."

These days the Klarsfelds are busy with many projects - Mr Klarsfeld runs an organisation called 
the Sons and Daughters of Jews Deported from France, and has published several volumes of a 
book which catalogues the names, ages and addresses of French children deported in the war.
As a result of their efforts, the Klarsfelds themselves have been arrested, deported, beaten, had 
two attempts made on their lives and even been put on trial, but they have also been showered 
with international honours.

Among many other awards, both were given the Legion of Honour by France in 1984. Mr Klarsfeld 
has also been awarded full Israeli citizenship. "Having left Germany when I was young, I couldn't 
have dreamed one day to be what I am today," Mrs Klarsfeld said. "We tried to do quite a lot. We 
acted very often illegally, but our illegality is nothing compared with the people we had in front of 
us." 

*PURSUED BY THE KLARSFELDS*

*Klaus Barbie*: 'Butcher of Lyon', sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity

*Alois Brunner*: Sent tens of thousands of Jews to their deaths, convicted in absentia in 2001 
and sentenced to life imprisonment, last seen in Syria and considered likely to be dead

*Kurt Lischka*: Responsible for deportations to concentration camps, jailed for 10 years

*Maurice Papon*: Sentenced to 10 years in jail for helping send more than 1,600 French Jews 
to die in concentration camps

*Paul Touvier*: Former aide to Klaus Barbie, executed seven Jews, convicted of crimes against
humanity and jailed for life


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## Yrys (11 Aug 2009)

Nazi war criminal jailed for life

A former German infantry commander has been jailed for life for his role 
in the killing of 14 civilians in an Italian village during World War II.

A Munich state court found 90-year-old Josef Scheungraber guilty of 
ordering the killings, in what was one of the last Nazi crimes trials in 
Germany. The killings took place in Falzano di Cortona, in Tuscany, 
on 26 June 1944.

Scheungraber had previously been sentenced in absentia by an Italian 
military court to life in prison. Scheungraber had always denied the 
charges, saying he handed the victims to the military police and did 
not know what happened to them.

His legal team had called for his acquittal due to contradictions in the
testimony of witnesses 65 years after the events.

*Free for decades*

Dressed in a traditional Bavarian jacket, Scheungraber appeared in good 
health as his sentence was handed down. The court found that as a 25-year-
old Wehrmacht lieutenant, he had ordered the brutal killings in revenge for 
an attack by Italian partisans that left two German soldiers dead.

Although he was charged with 14 counts of murder and one of attempted 
murder, Scheungraber was actually convicted of 10 murders due to a lack 
of evidence.

German troops shot dead a 74-year-old woman and three men in the street 
before forcing 11 others into a farmhouse which they then blew up. Only the 
youngest - a 15-year-old boy named Gino Massetti - survived, and he gave 
evidence during the trial in Munich.

Scheungraber, the former commander of a company of engineers, had lived for 
decades as a free man, and served on the town council in Ottobrunn, outside 
Munich. He ran a furniture shop, attended German veterans' marches and recently 
received an award for municipal service.

Although he was sentenced to life in prison for the Tuscany killings by an Italian 
military tribunal in La Spezia in September 2006, Scheungraber did not attend 
that trial as Germany generally does not extradite its citizens without their consent.


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## Dennis Ruhl (12 Aug 2009)

John Demjanjuk was minding his own business in the spring of 1941.  He was happy to be alive, the Soviets having killed as many as 12 million of his innocent fellow Ukrainians in the 1920s and 1930s.  The Germans then attacked his country and he was taken prisoner by them.  He survived unlike 90 % of his fellow prisoners by volunteering to work for the Germans.  At the end of the war he went to the United States and survived again unlike many of his liberated countrymen who were returned to the Soviet Union at the point of British and American guns.

In the 1990s Demjanjuk was deported to Israel and convicted with much eyewitness testimony and sentenced to death for being a notoriously brutal prison guard, Ivan the Terrible, who witnesses said had been killed 50 years previously.  The Soviet Union broke up and evidence came out of Russia that Demjanjuk was in fact who he said he was.  The pathetic final chapter on the Israeli trial was the prosecution argument that even if he wasn't who they thought he was that he must still be guilty of something.  Demjanjuk went home free to the US.

After not having any evidence that John Demjanjuk was who he said he was while he was defending himself from the crimes of the notorious Ivan the Terrible, German authorities now decided that he was a prison camp guard and as such must have been a war criminal.  The same country that attacked his country and gave him the choice of death or collaberation is now trying him for that forced collaberation.  They may not call themselves Nazis but they still step with a little goose.

Anyone who has witnessed trials knows that 6 months after the fact witnesses tend to screw up details.  65 years later it is totally something else.  Most of the recent trials are simply show trials with little weight given to sufficiency of evidence and much weight given to the propaganda provided by conviction.


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## tango22a (13 Aug 2009)

Dennis:

I just wonder if you are campaigning for the nomination of "Patron Saint of Lost Causes"

tango22a


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## Dennis Ruhl (13 Aug 2009)

tango22a said:
			
		

> Dennis:
> 
> I just wonder if you are campaigning for the nomination of "Patron Saint of Lost Causes"
> 
> tango22a



You might be right but I really don't have a dog in this hunt.  Eastern Europeans who were victims of German racism shouldn't have to relive it 65 years later.  Much of the administration of death camps including many of the grotesque tasks were done by Jewish people themselves and they were rightly forgiven as victims.

The death rate among imprisoned Soviet soldiers was approaching that of imprisoned Jews and yet the collaborators are looked upon as perpetrators and not victims.  People who would imprison a 90 year old man in a wheel chair for no particular crime other than being there are pigs.


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## 57Chevy (18 Jul 2012)

I know it's an old thread, but the hunt goes on. Video at link.
I did a search to find out where I could share this article from EuroNews with provisions of the Copyright Act 

Nazi war criminal Laszlo Csatary arrested in Hungary
http://www.euronews.com/2012/07/18/nazi-war-criminal-laszlo-csatary-arrested-in-hungary/

Hungarian prosecutors say they have taken Nazi criminal Laszlo Csatary into custody.

The 97-year-old had been living openly in an apartment in Budapest.

There has been mounting pressure on Hungarian authorities to take action against Csatary from the nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre and British newspaper The Sun.

For crimes committed while he was police chief in the Slovakian city of Kosice, Csatary received a death sentence from a Czech court after a trial held in his absence in 1948.
                                              ______________________________________

from wikipedia:
Laszlo Csatary (László Csizsik-Csatáry)

(born 1914 or 1915) is a convicted Nazi war criminal. In 2012, his name was added to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals.

In 1944, Csizsik-Csatáry was the Royal Hungarian Police commander in the city of Kassa in Hungary (now Košice in Slovakia). In charge of a Jewish ghetto, he helped organize the deportation of approximately 15,700 Jews to Auschwitz. He is also accused of having inhumanely exercised his authority in a forced labour camp. He was convicted in absentia for war crimes in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and sentenced to death. He fled to Canada in 1949 claiming to be a Yugoslav national and settled in Montreal where he became an art dealer. He became a citizen in 1955. In 1997, his Canadian citizenship was revoked by the federal Cabinet for lying on his citizenship application. He fled the country two months later.

In 2012 Csizsik-Csatáry was located in Budapest, Hungary, based on a tip received by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in September 2011. His address was exposed by reporters from the Sun in July 2012. He was reportedly taken into custody on 18 July 2012 by the Hungarian authorities for questioning.
                                                      ___________________________________


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## dogger1936 (18 Jul 2012)

May he rot in prison for the remainder of his years.


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