WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish authorities have reopened an
investigation into World War II crimes committed at Auschwitz
and its satellite camps that was closed in the 1980s because
of the country's isolation behind the Iron Curtain.
One aim of the new probe is to track down any living Nazi perpetrators, according
to an announcement Thursday by the Institute of National
Remembrance, a state body that investigates Nazi and communist-era
crimes.
Nazi Germany opened Auschwitz
in 1940, months after it invaded and occupied Poland. Over
the next five years of war, German and Austrian Nazis murdered
up to 1.5 million people there at the expanded Auschwitz-Birkenau
camp complex, most of them Jews from across Europe, but
also Poles, Roma, gays and others.
The investigation was opened by
a branch of the remembrance institute in Krakow, which
is located near Auschwitz. Germany also operated other
death camps across Poland — like Chelmno, Treblinka and
Belzec — and it was not immediately clear if new investigations
into them are also planned.
A leading international Nazi hunter,
Efraim Zuroff, praised Poland's reopening of the investigation.
He said it "could have tremendous implications" in paving the way for new prosecutions thanks to the precedent set by the conviction
of Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk in Germany earlier this
year.
Demjanjuk was convicted of 28,060
counts of accessory to murder. It was the first time Germany
convicted someone as a Nazi camp guard based on the theory
that if he worked there, he was part of the extermination
process, even without direct proof of any specific killings.
That has opened the door to many
more possible prosecutions, and German authorities have
since reopened hundreds of dormant investigations of Nazi
death camp guards — men who are now so old that time is
running out for prosecutors.
Zuroff said that should the Polish
investigation track down any German perpetrators, he would
expect them — like Demjanjuk — to be tried in a German
court since Berlin requests extradition in such cases.
"I welcome any investigation
that could lead to convictions," Zuroff, the main Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Associated
Press.
However, he also noted that Poland
is the country with the most ongoing investigations into
Nazi crimes, but that these almost never result in prosecutions.
Poland's Institute of National
Remembrance "excels in opening up investigations. They don't excel in prosecuting Nazi war
criminals," Zuroff said.
Poland originally launched investigations
into crimes at Auschwitz in the 1960s and 1970s, but closed
them in the 1980s without any indictments being made. Poland
had difficulty questioning witnesses and perpetrators living
abroad because it was cut off behind the Iron Curtain.
The Institute for National Remembrance
said it has already begun questioning witnesses as part
of the revived investigation. It said the probe is aimed
in part at "finding and, if needed, detaining the perpetrators."
The last time Poland prosecuted
anyone for Nazi crimes was in 2001, when a Pole, Henryk
Mania, was sentenced to eight years in prison for taking
parts in acts of genocide at the death camp of Chelmno.
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