THE Simon Wiesenthal
Centre has named two new Lithuanian war crimes suspects who
Lithuanian informants say went to Australia after World War
II.
The two allegedly participated in the murder of at least
3000 Jews in the Lithuanian town of Rokiskis (Rakishok in
Yiddish) in the summer and autumn of 1941.
They were among 184 war crimes suspects who informants in
Lithuania reported in the first year of Operation Last Chance,
a new Nazi-hunting project.
The project offers a $US10,000 reward for information which
could lead to the conviction and punishment of Nazi war criminals
in the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Project co-ordinator Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's
Jerusalem office, said this week he knew nothing yet about when and how the two
suspects went to Australia, whether they had stayed or whether they were dead
or alive.
"
We attempted to trace their immigration, but did not find proof of
their arrival in Australia," he said.
Zuroff said Chief Prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevicius, of
the Lithuanian Procurator-General's Special Investigations
Division, was at present investigating the murders in Rokiskis.
The centre launched Operation Last Chance in the Baltics
last July with assistance and financing from Targum Shlishi
Foundation of Miami headed by Aryeh Rubin.
Zuroff told the AJN if he received sufficient funding he
would launch the project in Australia where he believed there
was "good potential for serious information".
The centre hoped to launch the project in Germany, Austria,
the Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, Poland and Hungary this year.
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