Final Hunt Is On for 60 Believed Nazis

Simon Wiesenthal Center's poster campaign hits Germany
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 24, 2013 6:43 AM CDT
Final Hunt Is On for 60 Believed Nazis
Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, stands in front of a placard reading "Operation Last Chance: Late But Not Too Late," displayed in Berlin, Tuesday, July 23, 2013.   (AP Photo/Gero Breloer)

There are believed to be about 60 surviving former Nazis fit to stand trial—and the Simon Wiesenthal Center wants to track them all down. The US-based organization has distributed some 2,000 posters across Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne calling for tips, the BBC reports. The posters read: "Operation Last Chance: Late, But Not Too Late." "Unfortunately, very few people who committed the crimes had to pay for them," says Efraim Zuroff, the Wiesenthal Center's top Nazi hunter. "The passage of time in no way diminishes the crimes." Rewards for information reach as high as $33,080.

It was the 2011 conviction of death camp guard John Demjanjuk in Munich that fueled the new campaign, the Los Angeles Times reports. Demjanjuk, who died last year, was found to be an accessory to murder of 27,900 Jews without direct evidence he took part in a specific murder. The BBC reports that Germany is divided, with some, particularly younger, citizens feeling that the crimes are a relic of a distant past. To that, Zuroff presents the center's five key objectives in tracking down the alleged killers. Among them: "Old age should not afford immunity to murderers" and "every Nazi victim deserves that an effort be made to hold their killers accountable." The BBC has a shortlist of some of the Center's most-wanted suspects, which includes Aribert Heim, a Buchenwald doctor who disappeared in 1962 and was last seen in Egypt 21 years ago. (More Nazis stories.)

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