Campaign leader says Estonian press and police fail to cooperate

Efraim Zuroff, head of the Wiesenthal Centre for apprehending war criminals, has accused the Estonian press and police of unwillingness to help bring to justice those in the country who took part in the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

In July Zuroff offered a reward of 10,000 US dollars to anyone who can provide evidence against those in Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania who were involved in the war crimes. The reward is part of a campaign called "Last Chance", and is aimed at finding those who took part in Nazi crimes during the German occupation.

The offer of the reward was followed by a number of sarcastic editorials in the Estonian press, some of which turned the idea into a joke.

One municipal official offered a 20,000 dollar reward for evidence against residents of Israel, the United States, or Russia who had taken part in Stalin's purges.

Zuroff has pointed out that there have been no trials of accused Nazi war criminals during the country's independence.

"They are 105, or 115, or 120 years old. It is not in accordance with the system of justice to prosecute dead people", said former Estonian President Lennart Meri to Helsingin Sanomat.
He also feels that the period of just over ten years since Estonian independence is a relatively short time to organise all archives and find out what information really might exist.
During his presidency Lennart Meri named an independent international commission to investigate the crimes against humanity that might have taken place in Estonia during the German and Soviet occupation.

"The occupation affected all citizens - Estonians, Russians, Germans, Jews, Swedes, Finns, Ingrians, Setus, Latvians, and Lithuanians", Meri says. He does not want to raise the Jews above the others.

"During the occupation people of low morals were used who may have committed crimes", Meri adds. "Unfortunately we have not had as much time to conduct our studies as the Wiesenthal Centre has."

Meri feels that Zuroff's activities in Estonia are based on his own nationalist feelings:
"I respect Efraim Zuroff's activities on behalf of the citizens of his own country, and for the clarification of their fates. He is an Israeli nationalist and that is the whole thrust of his activity."

Historian Meelis Maripuu says that it is difficult to find evidence against individual Nazi criminals, because all that are left are interrogation protocols of the Soviet period.
"The interrogation protocols were often written in advance. The signatures were either coerced at gunpoint or were the result of administering of drugs", says Maripuu, who studies Estonia's recent history.

As a gesture of political goodwill the Estonian Government decided on Tuesday that schools in the country would start to mark January 27 as a day to commemorate the persecution of the Jews. Prime Minister Siim Kallas has insisted that the decision has nothing to do with Zuroff's campaign.