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LUDWIGSBURG - Germany's national office for catching Nazi
war criminals rejected criticism by the Simon Wiesenthal
Center that not enough of them were being prosecuted.
Kurt Schrimm, who heads the special prosecutions office
in Ludwigsburg, said the slowing pace was related to the
scarcity of legally acceptable evidence 62 years after World
War II.
Sc
hrimm told Deutsche Presse-Agentur in an interview. Often
important documents were missing or witnesses had died of
old age.
An annual report by the Wiesenthal Center criticized the
Germans for failing to produce an indictment or conviction
since March 2006. The report praised Italy and the United
States.
Schrimm said the number of indictments should not used to
measure the success of his office's investigations. Schrimm
insisted that his investigators were conducting worldwide
inquiries "at top pace."
The office has authority to hunt former Nazis in all of
Germany's 16 states.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, founded in 1977 and named after
the late "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal, is based
in Los Angeles. This week's report was issued by its Jerusalem
office. haaretz.com
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