Jerusalem – The Simon Wiesenthal Center announced here today that it had submitted to the German Ministers of Justice (Heiko Maas) and the Interior (Thomas de Maiziere) a list of 80 persons (76 men and 4 women) who had served in the notorious Nazi Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads), which murdered more than a million Jews by shooting in areas of the Soviet Union during the Holocaust.
In a statement issued here today by its chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center explained that the suspects in question were the youngest members of the mobile killing squads listed in documents in the Center’s possession.
According to Zuroff:
“The individuals whose names we submitted to the German ministers were all born between 1920 and 1924 and constitute the suspects most likely to still be alive and healthy enough to face prosecution. The list was submitted in the hope of encouraging the German judicial authorities to expedite the efforts to bring these killers to justice and to offer the Center’s assistance in this important project.”
Background: Following the May 2011 conviction in Germany of Sobibor death camp guard Ivan Demjanjuk solely on the basis of his service in the camp, German prosecutors began searching for death camp guards and death squad members, who could now be brought to trial without proof that they had committed a specific crime against a specific victim (as had been the case in Germany for the previous fifty years). During the past year, German prosecutors had announced locating more than fifty death camp guards, but not a single member of a death squad.
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