“After the Second World War, the main effort to bring leading Nazi war criminals to justice was the Nuremberg trials. That court however, was not a permanent institution. Following the conclusion of those proceedings, the major responsibility for prosecuting such criminals was initially borne by the Allied powers occupying Germany; but it was eventually turned over to the new governments in West and East Germany. In West Germany 90,000 people were indicted from 1950 on; but only 7,000 were convicted.
“The prosecution of Nazi war criminals was carried out in a sporadic and inconsistent manner. It later became known that large numbers had emigrated from mainland Europe. Many were discovered in Latin American countries; but they also emigrated to such Western democracies as the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and even Sweden and New Zealand.”
Bringing a Little Justice to the World
“As it became clear that not nearly enough was being done to seek out war criminals, some Jews began to conduct their own investigations. These included Simon Wiesenthal in Vienna and Tuvia Friedman, who established a documentation center in Haifa. Both had worked for American intelligence agencies in post-war Europe and both tried to convince governments to bring war criminals to justice.
“In some countries, individuals were able to register significant achievements. Serge Klarsfeld in France is an outstanding example. Besides his interest in the case of Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor, he focused on French war criminals within a wider framework of Shoah-related activities on commemoration and education.”
Efraim Zuroff, Director of the Wiesenthal Center in Israel, belongs to a younger generation of Nazi-hunters. He has spent much of his professional life trying to bring a little more justice to the world. He summarizes the situation thus: “There is no question that only limited justice was achieved. Many who bore either primary or secondary responsibility for the crimes against the Jewish people never paid for them. One cannot view this issue from an overall European standpoint, only from the perspective of about 20 different countries.”
Germany after the War
“In Germany a major obstacle hindering prosecution was that only officers, or those who had acted with clear personal responsibility, were ever brought to court. Officially, the ‘superior orders’ defense, i.e. that a suspect could not be prosecuted because he or she had acted upon orders from their superiors, was not acceptable. Yet this became a guiding de facto principle of those actively involved in the prosecution of German Nazi war criminals.
“The prosecution of the members of the Einsatzgruppen – the special battalions which carried out the mass murders of the Jews in Eastern Europe – as well as the members of the German police battalions, was thus limited primarily to officers. Tens of thousands of perpetrators were never prosecuted. We are now certain of this, since the files are open and have been investigated. A Wiesenthal Center researcher, Dr. Stefan Klemp, reviewed the files of many of the approximately one hundred police battalions. Invariably, only a very few people, almost always officers, in each one were actually investigated.
“The Cold War led to a steady decline of prosecutions, because the circumstances dictated reconciliation. West Germany had to be built into a bulwark against communism.” According to Zuroff, “East Germany made even less of an effort to prosecute war criminals. While it did conduct Nazi war crime trials, far less were prosecuted than should have been. Those who helped the communist regime were not put on trial.”
Austria: A Failing Grade Even Today
“In Austria, another important perpetrator country, few Nazi war criminals were prosecuted. Indeed, there has been only one since 1978, and that prosecution was ultimately dropped for medical reasons! The accused, Heinrich Gross, a doctor who practiced euthanasia, convinced the court that he was mentally unfit and thus unable to stand trial. Once he left the courtroom, he gave a very intelligent and detailed interview to the press, which proved he had put on a performance inside. The judge thereupon decided to suspend the decision, but nothing has happened since. In Austria, no central office was established to deal with bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.
“The number of Austrians was proportionately high among the main perpetrators of war crimes. Yet the country made a ‘career’ out of claiming to be a victim of Nazism. Its leaders had no political interest in investigating war criminals since prosecution would prove the opposite. On philosophical, moral and historical levels, that only changed in the 1990’s.
“In 200 l the Wiesenthal Center gave Austria a failing grade in its annual report on the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. Its ambassador in Israel complained to us, asking, ‘What should we do?’ I answered: ‘If you finally establish a central office for the prosecution of war criminals, you will indicate that you have, even at this late stage, the intention of achieving at least a small measure of justice.’ However, nothing happened.”
“The other countries concerned can be divided into two groups: the communist countries and the Western democracies. Most Jews had lived in Eastern Europe, where almost all the murders were carried out. Many local citizens assisted the Nazis in these.”
Zuroff summarizes developments: “When the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe, communist governments implemented an ambitious program of investigating war criminals and collaborators. Political considerations were an important motivation. The communists wanted to delegitimize the previous regimes by categorizing them as ‘bourgeois nationalists.’ The official communist terminology referred to ‘Hitlerite fascists’ who executed innocent Soviet citizens. Tens of thousands were tried, sentenced and punished.
“Most of these were pardoned and freed in 1955. Among the major beneficiaries of this amnesty were Nazi collaborators from both the Soviet Union and central Europe who had been sent to Siberia rather than executed. Ultimately the latter were allowed to return home. The Soviet Union published many documents and books about some of these criminals. In other cases, nothing was made public, which leads one to suspect that they may have become double agents. Well-aware of the crimes committed by these Nazi collaborators, the Soviets were in a position to put pressure on emigre war criminals to provide information and intelligence from their places of residence in Western democracies.”
Chasing Nazis in a Vacuum
“The leading Jewish organizations did not take much interest in the war criminals issue, because their priorities were rebuilding and strengthening Jewish communities. They could not focus their major energies on justice or revenge by chasing Nazis. It was much more important to reconstruct Jewish identity, reinstill Jewish pride and rebuild Jewish security.
“The establishment of the State of Israel represented a victory that changed Jewish life for many Jews, and especially for the survivors among them. It was the antithesis of the Shoah. As the country was constantly under attack, supporting it drew much of the effort and energy of world Jewry.
“Gradually efforts to prosecute war criminals petered out everywhere. By the mid-fifties, Simon Wiesenthal also left the chase. He began working for the ORT organization, helping Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe.”
A Turning Point: The Eichmann Trial
Zuroff points out that the situation changed again with the 1961 Eichmann trial. “Israel saw in Mossad operatives capturing him in Argentina and bringing him to judgment – on its own soil – the fulfillment of a symbolic role. The Israeli government, however, had never previously considered that it had a major role to play in prosecuting war criminals. From my conversations with Israeli authorities at the time, it became clear that they did not really care about prosecuting any more murderers.
“The issue came up specifically because of the case of a Romanian archbishop by the name of Valerian Trifa, who had been involved in pogroms in Romania in 1941 and who had emigrated after the war to the United States. There he was stripped of his American citizenship. In 1981 the U.S. looked for a country which would put him on trial. Israel refused to receive him. At the time Ha’aretz wrote that Israel cannot be turned into a dumping ground for Nazi war criminals. Otherwise each free country would prefer, rather than judging them itself, to ship them off to Israel.
“The Trifa case mainly dealt with incitement. He had given speeches urging his followers in the fascist Iron Guard to murder Jews. There was no evidence that the archbishop had ever killed anyone personally. In the end, he went from the U.S. to Portugal where he died. This case started a public controversy on what role Israel should play in the prosecution of war criminals. A position consolidated that Israel itself only wanted to bring a few of the better known ones to justice, such as Mengele. Yet it wanted to support the efforts of the United States and other countries to investigate and, if possible, to prosecute war criminals.”
The Demjanjuk Trial
“That was the background to Israel’s decision to ask for the extradition of Ivan Demjanjuk. He was accused of having participated in mass murders, was relatively young, in good health and lived in a country which sought to extradite him. Pressure created the circumstances which led Israel to request his extradition from the U.S. The trial could not prove he was Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka. The problems with the Demjanjuk trial convinced Israel not to take on any more individual prosecutions of Nazi war criminals.
“After the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, Israel advocated prosecution in the former communist countries because they now have relatively independent judiciaries. Latvia and Lithuania are among the prime countries approached in the last decade to prosecute Nazi war criminals locally.
“Once it became clear, in the mid-seventies, that a substantial number of Nazi war criminals had escaped to Western democracies, there was an upsurge in prosecution efforts. This coincided with a major increase in the interest in the in Bordeaux – and who after the war became a cabinet minister -was condemned to ten years in prison. He has since been released for health reasons.”
Criminals Dispersing over the World
“Thousands of war criminals, almost exclusively of Eastern European origin, emigrated to Western democracies such as the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Aus tralia. Their motivation in moving to the West was twofold. They sought to escape prosecution by the Soviets or by the communist authorities of their homelands, and they did not want to live under communist regimes.
“German and Austrian war criminals emigrated primarily to Latin American countries, mostly to Argentina and Chile, some to Brazil and Paraguay. Klaus Barbie moved to Bolivia. There were exceptions. A few went to African countries; and some went to Arab countries, such as Egypt and Syria. One well-known war criminal Syria has shielded is Alois Brunner. He was one of Eichmann’s lieutenants at Department IV-B-4 of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the Reich Security Main Office. He was responsible for the deportation of 128,500 Jews. Of these, 44,000 Jews were from Austria, 47,000 from Greece, 23,500 from France and 14,000 from Slovakia. In March 2001 he was sentenced in France in absentia to life imprisonment.”
Sweden: a Very Problematic Country
“Sweden is a very problematic country as far as shielding war criminals is concerned. After the Holocaust two types of Nazi war criminals lived there. The first were Swedes who had escaped to Norway, served in the SS, and were involved in war crimes. They were finally exposed in two books written by the Swedish journalist Bosse Schoen. The second were Baltic Nazi war criminals who escaped to Sweden toward the end of the war. These were primarily Estonians and Latvians and, to a lesser extent, Lithuanians.”
“In 1987 the Wiesenthal Center gave its first list of suspected Nazi war criminals living in Sweden to the Swedish authorities. They responded that they have a statute of limitations on murder, and thus refused to investigate. I have corresponded with Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson over the last two years and Sweden is now finally in the process of changing the current legal situation regarding those accused of genocide and crimes against humanity.
“In fact, the Swedish government now wants to pass a law to eliminate the statute of limitations on genocide-related crimes. This law will not be retroactive, however, and thus it will not change the position of war criminals still living in the country. The government simply doesn’t care.
“The Estonian Historians’ Commission, established by Estonian President Lennart Meri to investigate the Nazi occupation, issued its initial conclusions in January 200 I. Some Estonian war criminals were listed, among them Oskar Angelus, who was a leading member of the Estonian self-government, and shared responsibility for the mass murder of Jews and communists. He lived in Sweden. We passed his name on to the Swedes, about the time he died. This case highlighted the fact that high-level Nazi war criminals escaped to Sweden, a country which has no legal tools to deal with them, and has never taken any steps to change that.”
Croatia: The Sakic Trial
“There are great educational benefits in pursuing these activities. Even if people are prosecuted and not punished, the exposure of what has happened is important. The trials have an incredible effect in terms of the lessons being taught. We helped put Dinko Sakic on trial in Croatia in 1999. He was the former commander of the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac, also known as ‘the Auschwitz of the Balkans.’ The man would have given his life for an independent Croatia. Then Croatia became independent and put him on trial in Zagreb before a Croatian judge.
“The Sakic trial was broadcast daily on television and was covered very extensively by the local media. Ithad a profound effect on Croatian society, which included many people who were naturally sympathetic to Sakic. At the same time, however, there were also thousands of people who had fought with the partisans against the Nazis and their Ustasha allies, and they constituted a natural lobby for Sakic’s prosecution. It was a tremendous gamble to put Sakic on trial in Croatia; because Franjo Tudjman, the Croatian president, was a Holocaust denier.”
Justice prevailed and Sakic was condemned to the maximum sentence of 20 years. Says Zuroff: “I will never forget the day of the verdict in that courtroom in early October 1999. It was the first ever trial of a Nazi war criminal in a post-communist country. Half those in attendance were fascists; and the others, anti-fascists.”
The Baltic Countries
“This could not have happened in the Baltic countries because no Lithuanians fought against the Nazis. Yet these trials can have an important effect there. An editorial in The Baltic Times, an English language weekly, wrote about a notoriously anti-Semitic Lithuanian member of parliament named Sustauskas, saying that he brought shame on the country and Lithuania’s aspirations to enter the European Union (EU). To them the negative effect of such anti Semites on Lithuania’s chances to enter the EU were the problem. The real problem, however, is the Lithuanians’ failure to honestly confront their extensive complicity in the murder of Lithuanian Jewry and Jews elsewhere during the Shoah.
“There is a distinct lack of political will to pursue these cases in Latvia and Estonia as well. Whatever activity has been undertaken only came as a response to pressure from abroad and in cases initiated by private Jewish organizations. The local prosecution agencies have done next to nothing. If they do bring any war criminal to justice, they will do so only because it serves their own interests, rather than out of conviction. Any such trial however would have a major impact on society. That is why it is so important.”
Three to Five Years More?
Zuroff expresses his regrets: “As a private organization, the Wiesenthal Center never had the resources to undertake a widespread search for war criminals. If the Wiesenthal Center had had 10 times more money 20 years ago, we might have brought many more people to trial. We substituted for governments which didn’t do their job as far as justice was concerned. We knew that we would find only the tip of the iceberg. Our whole strategy was to embarrass governments so that they would do what, in theory, they were supposed to do.”
These activities also have a multiplier effect. “As long as we continue, Nazi war criminals cannot sleep quietly with the comfort of being certain that they will not be brought to trial. Twenty years ago I was asked how long did I think the chase of Nazi criminals could continue. I answered then: a further three to five years. Today I would say the same.”
Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the coordinator of the Center’s Nazi War Crimes Research worldwide. He was born in New York and moved to Israel in 1970. He holds a B.A. in history from Yeshiva University, an M. A. in Holocaust Studiesfrom the Hebrew University, where he also completed his Ph.D. He has written several books including, Occupa tion: Nazi Hunter, the Continuing Search for the Perpetrators of the Holocaust, ( Jersey City: KTAV Publishing House, 1994).