By J. MICHAEL LYONS, Associated Press Writer
RIGA, Latvia - Latvian newspapers published ads Friday announcing a $10,000 reward
for information that leads to the conviction of aging Nazi war crimes suspects.
The advertisements are part of "Operation
Last Chance," an effort to prosecute Nazi war criminals led by the Los Angeles-based Simon
Wiesenthal Center. They were to appear Saturday as well.
"
The fact that somebody has got away with this for 50 years does not diminish
the nature of the crime," said
Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Jerusalem office.
The ads show grainy photo of Jews being led to killing sites, luggage in tow.
Prosecutors in the former Soviet republic said gathering evidence against the
few surviving suspects — men in their 80s and 90s — has been difficult.
"
If anyone comes forward with information we are ready to investigate," said
Dzintra Subrovska, a spokeswoman for Latvia's Prosecutor General's Office.
Similar ads ran in neighboring Lithuania late last year and will run in Estonian
newspapers later this month.
About 100 people responded to the ads in Lithuania, Zuroff said, but the information
has not led to any arrests.
Some 80,000 Jews in Latvia, 90 percent of the prewar Jewish population, were
killed during the 1941-44 Nazi occupation. Thousands of Jews from Europe were
also sent to Latvia for execution.
"
During the Holocaust, local collaborators helped the Nazis murder about 100,000
local and foreign Jews," reads
the text, which included telephone numbers for the Latvian prosecutor's office.
Officials convicted hundreds of people accused of Nazi atrocities in Latvia after
the Baltic country was annexed by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.
But Latvia has yet to prosecute any Nazi suspects since it regained independence
with the Soviet collapse in 1991.
The ads were designed and funded by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Miami-based
Targum Shlishi Foundation.
________________________________________________________________________
| 
