![]() The two Treblinka trials concerning the Treblinka extermination camp personnel began in 1964. We’re doing our best to find who we can.Trials related to the personnel of the Treblinka extermination camp that began in 1964 Düsseldorf District Court ( Land- und Amtsgericht Düsseldorf). “We are working against the odds and against the clock. But it’s almost completely clear that they are dead,” said Zuroff. “I can’t close those cases because there’s no forensic evidence to prove that they are dead. His son says he lived as Tarek Hussein Farid in Cairo until his death in 1992. Heim was a doctor who served at several Nazi concentration camps and became notorious for conducting gruesome experiments on prisoners. Zuroff reluctantly admits that the two men who for years were at the top of the Wiesenthal Centre’s list are now almost certainly dead: Austrians Alois Brunner and Aribert Heim.īrunner was a key assistant to Eichmann, and deported tens of thousands of Jews to death camps before escaping to Syria.įor decades the Assad dynasty blocked efforts to find him, although he is believed to have lost an eye and several fingers to letter bombs sent by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, to his home in Damascus, where he is thought to have lived under the pseudonym of Dr Georg Fischer. The men on his most-wanted list are in their late eighties and nineties, and suspects often die while under investigation or during the trial process. ![]() Zuroff is also fighting a losing battle with time. “We try to get pros but we don’t always have them.” “Often they are not professionals ,” he said. When investigating a tip-off, Zuroff uses local people “who are sympathetic to our cause” to verify information. ![]() I have to find the person, gather evidence and create the political will to act where often political will doesn’t exist.” “I am one-third detective, one-third historian, and one-third political lobbyist. I can’t trust them not to bury it,” said Zuroff. We will try and verify information ourselves and then present the case to the authorities. “We will not go to local authorities first. ![]() He aims particularly sharp criticism at Austria, the Baltic states and Ukraine. He complains about a lack of funds, insists that he has no help from Israeli or other state agencies and jokes that “only in dreams” does he have a team of investigators on hand to identify, track and build cases against Nazi war criminals.īut he says the main impediment to prosecutions is the unwillingness of many countries to seriously investigate the crimes that their people committed in collaboration with or under the duress of their Nazi occupiers. “We subject tip-offs to three tests before we act: How credible is the information? Is the person concerned alive and can they be brought to justice? And have they ever previously been prosecuted for this crime?” Zuroff told The Irish Times. Zuroff leads the Wiesenthal Centre's search for men like Csatary, who topped the wanted list of its Operation Last Chance, which calls on governments to do more to find former Nazis and offers a reward of up to €25,000 for information leading to the prosecution of war criminals ( After Wiesenthal died in 2005, the mantle of world’s leading Nazi hunter passed to Efraim Zuroff, a New York-born Israeli who has spent three decades tracking down war criminals around the globe.
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