By Dina Kyriakidou

BUCHAREST, Sept 12 (Reuters) - A leading Nazi hunter on Friday launched a search for Holocaust criminals in Romania, hoping to bring the culprits to justice and force the ex-communist country to face dark chapters of its past.

Although hundreds of thousands of Jews were exterminated during World War Two in Nazi-ally Romania, as late as this summer Romanian officials have denied the Holocaust ever took place in the Balkan country, angering Israel.

The comments also brought the Simon Wiesenthal Center's top Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, to Romania to launch "Operation Last Chance", which has exposed several war criminals in the Baltics. "Does Romanian society, Romanian leadership have the courage to bring these people to justice?" Zuroff told a news conference. "This is what we hope will happen."

He said the operation -- which has uncovered 241 suspected war criminals and sent 55 to prosecutors in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine -- hinged on people coming forward to identify suspects and on local justice systems.

He acknowledged that Romania was reluctant to deal with its history -- admitting the war crimes, asking for forgiveness, prosecuting those responsible and educating the new generations.

" In facing the past, there are serious problems in Romania," he said. "There has been no investigation and no prosecutions."

War time leader Marshal Ion Antonescu, the Romanian army, the rabidly anti-Semitic Iron Guard and the Nazis killed over half of the country's pre-war Jewish community of 750,000 in pogroms, death trains and camps.

Although Antonescu, still seen by many Romanians as a hero for fighting off the Soviet army, was tried and executed as a war criminal shortly after the war, no other Romanian was ever brought to justice over the Holocaust.

Post-communist Romania, eager to join NATO and the European Union, has banned fascist symbols like statues of Antonescu but has done little to uncover the truth.

Zuroff, and his colleague Aryeh Rubin from the Targum Shlishi foundation, are advertising in the Romanian press a $10,000 reward for any information leading to the prosecution of Romanian war criminals.

" There is very little time left," Rubin said. "How you will be judged as a society in the future will depend on what happens here in the next four to five years."
Romania's Jewish community, which now numbers about 13,000, said the project was crucial for Romania as a whole.

" We are not looking for revenge. We are only looking for the truth," Alex Sivan, the director of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, told Reuters.