“Operation Last Chance” was launched on Tuesday and offers the German public a grand total of 25,000 euro ($33,000) for any information pertaining to surviving suspects complicit in World War II hate crimes.
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. Lipschis, who was a
cook, contends that the only role he played was in the kitchen.
The campaign has left some experts unimpressed. German-Israeli
historian Michael Wolffson told German station Deutschlandradio
Kultur that “on the contrary, the effect will rather be to
trigger pity towards people who deserve no pity,” adding that
“it's downright disrespectful and shameless” to offer so
much for dangerous criminals.
A fellow Nazi hunter named Serge Klarsfeld also disagreed, saying
that the 11th-hour bid for justice “left a bitter
aftertaste.”
“At the time when it was possible to try the criminals, when
there was evidence, Germany failed to do its work,” he said.