It is nearly twenty years since a wide-ranging, passionate public debate took place in this country on how to deal with evidence that individuals who committed crimes against humanity during the Nazi reign of terror had emigrated to Australia.

With the pioneering research of Mark Aarons, revelations from researchers in the USA and Canada, the collection of material from any and varied Australian sources and, most significantly, the arrest in the US of Konrads Kalejs holding an Australian passport, there was overwhelming support for action which would go some way towards readdressing an intolerable moral situation.

The 1986 review by Andrew Menzies affirmed that many individuals abused Australia's humanitarianism and escaped prosecution for crimes committed in Europe by settling in Australia.

Hundreds of serious allegations were investigated and, in some cases, prosecutions recommended. At that time, forty years after the defeat of Nazism, many of the criminals had died, moved on or were not able to be traced.

In other cases, prosecutions were difficult due to the murderers' success in killing witnesses, the difficulty in collecting evidence in predominantly Communist countries and the technicalities of the laws adopted after an extended and complex parliamentary debate. A handful of cases came to trial, without convictions being recorded.

Since the collapse of the Communist empire, extradition treaties have been negotiated, information shared and the prospect of alleged criminals being deported to face trial in the countries in which the crimes were committed has opened up.

At the time of writing, the Australian government was considering a request by Hungary to extradite Charles Zentai, a Perth resident, so he can face trial for a 1944 murder which was part of the Nazis' persecution and genocide of the Jews of Europe.

One of the most important outcomes of Menzies' review was to make the recommendation, immediately accepted by the Government, that Australia should never have been and must cease to be a place where individuals who had committed crimes against humanity could "forget their past". Australia never should have harboured fugitives, let alone individuals escaping prosecution for crimes against humanity.

It is morally incumbent that the request for extradition is dealt with speedily while at the same time our parliamentarians exercise ways of further ensuring no one who committed crimes against humanity can ever feel they are safe and welcome in Australia.

The REVIEW, AIJAC, June 2005