THE Simon Wiesenthal Centre said yesterday it had passed the names of four suspected former Nazi criminals to German authorities so they can be brought to justice before they die.
The Jerusalem office of the centre did not identify the four, but said they were accused of crimes including "murder in concentration camps or taking part in shootings".
The names were among the first results of Operation Last Chance, a drive that the centre launched to track down elderly former Nazis for Second World War-era crimes before they die.
The centre, named after the late Nazi hunter and concentration camp survivor Simon Wiesenthal, said it had received 150 telephone calls, as well as e-mails and faxes, about suspects who have evaded prosecution.
It said it had filtered out 50 names and that four "promising" cases had been passed to German investigators. It said more names would follow.
The centre, which is offering $10,000 (£5,500) for information that leads to a suspect being charged, said two of the four were identified following tips from relatives. A third was tracked down after a tip from a member of their former unit. It gave no details of the fourth.
Kurt Schrimm, the head of the special German prosecutors' office that has hunted Nazis since 1958, said one of the four was already under investigation.
"In the other cases, we will check if they are known to us in any way," Mr Schrimm said. "If not, we'll investigate."
He said investigators would first want to question the people who provided information.
The inquiries in Germany come amid hopes that a fugitive Nazi concentration camp doctor will face justice soon.
Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said authorities were searching for Albert Heim, 91, in Spain. German authorities charged him in 1962 with killing hundreds of concentration inmates in Germany and Austria with injections.
He is also said to have performed sadistic experiments on inmates at the Buchenwald and Mauthausen camps.
The Scotsman, 4.11.05 |
