Nazis Not Being Prosecuted By Australia, Hungary: Report

VIENNA, Austria — Australia, Hungary and Lithuania are failing to investigate and prosecute suspected Nazi war criminals largely due to a lack of political will, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said Thursday.

The Nazi-hunting group said the same holds true for Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine, adding all countries in question face no legal obstacles in bringing suspects to justice.

The findings were published in the center's annual report, which graded the investigation and prosecution efforts of countries around the world between April 2007 and March 2008.

"In analyzing the results presented in this report, the critical importance of political will in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice is increasingly evident," wrote Efraim Zuroff, the center's chief Nazi hunter.

However, he lauded the success achieved by U.S. prosecution agencies, saying they should serve as a catalyst for governments around the world.

Australia was given the worst possible mark _ an "F-2"_ for its continued failure to extradite Nazi collaborator Charles Zentai, an Australian citizen accused of killing a Jewish teenager in Hungary during World War II.

The report said Australia admitted at least several hundred Nazi war criminals and collaborators but has failed to take successful legal action against a single one.

In August, an Australian judge found that Zentai's case and circumstances met the requirements of the Australian Extradition Act and the Extradition Treaty between Australia and the Republic of Hungary. Lawyers for Zentai said at the time they would appeal the ruling.

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Hungary, also in the "F-2" category, was reprimanded for failing to prosecute former gendarmerie officer Sandor Kepiro, accused by the Wiesenthal Center of playing an active role in the "mass murder of at least hundreds of civilians" in Novi Sad, Serbia, on Jan. 23, 1942.

In October, Hungarian prosecutors investigating Kepiro said they were considering expanding their probe to Serbia and were awaiting access to archival documents there which could shed new light on the 1942 events.

In a separate development in September, Serbian prosecutors lodged a request for investigation against Kepiro with the Belgrade war crimes court, the first step toward a possible indictment and trial.

Lithuania, meanwhile, got a failing grade for its refusal to jail Algimantas Dailide, convicted in 2006 of helping round up Jews for Nazis as an officer in the Vilnius security police. He was sentenced to five years in jail, but the judge ruled he was too frail to serve the sentence. The center said that reflected Lithuania's resistance to acknowledging "the extensive scope of local complicity in the crimes of the Holocaust."

The report also criticized Norway, Sweden and Syria, saying all three countries refuse in principle to investigate and prosecute suspected Nazi war criminals because of legal or ideological restrictions.

The report noted that Austria, which got a "C" for its efforts, has not convicted anyone for crimes committed against Jews during the Holocaust for more than three decades.

It also said Austrian authorities have refused the center's request to allow a foreign medical expert to examine Milivoj Asner, a wartime Croatian police chief living in Carinthia and suspected of an active role in deporting hundreds of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies to their deaths. Authorities have said Asner suffers from dementia.

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On the Net:

http://www.operationlastchance.org/

Comments

[SecularHuman]

In countries such as Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Austria, Latvia and Croatia, large numbers enthusiastically collaborated with the Nazis to murder Jews. Why should they be left in peace to cover up the crimes of their citizens? As for contemporary genocides, let's hope it chills today's murderers, like the Sudanese regime, to see their predecessors in crime hounded to their graves.

[tiradintim]

Estonia? Large numbers? Estonia had an extremely small Jewish population berfore WW2 (much smaller than the other 2 Baltic states). Therefore it was easy for the Nazis to declare it "judenfrei". Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (10% or more of the population) had far larger Jewish populations. I'm not too sure about Croatia. But I would highly doubt that there could be many Nazi collaborators living today in Estonia. You should check facts before you make sweeping statements.

[SecularHuman]

Even Estonia's own Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity concluded as follows:

"[T]he Commission concludes that the Estonian Legion and a number of Estonian police battalions were actively involved in the rounding up and shooting of Jews in at least one town in Belarus (Novogrudok); in guard duties in at least four towns in Poland (Lodz, Przemysl, Rzeszow, and Tarnopol); in guard duties at a number of camps in Estonia and elsewhere; and in the deportation to Germany of an unknown number of civilians from Belarus and Poland."

See the full report at http://www.historycommission.ee/temp/conclusions.htm

[FZliveson]

The holocaust was 65 years ago.
Since then probably 40-million people have been exterminated by one form
of cleansing or another.
Wouldn't we honor the dead and oppressed from the Second World War more by
stopping murder/oppression TODAY than to dig up crimes from more than
half a century back? It does not have to be one or the other, but saving lives
seems to me to be a higher priority than punishing people with no teeth and
fewer memories of the war.

[UnknownSoldier]

Very well said

[tiradintim]

YES. Some of the people the SW Center wishes to bring to justice may have only months or even weeks to live. With the planet in such a state of crisis right now from global warming and other cataclysms, somehow punishing a handful of decrepit old people who may have no memory of what they did 65 years ago seems not so terribly important. All reasonable people know and agree that the Holocaust was uniquely horrible. Now that at least two whole generations have grown up since then it is time for the SW people to declare their work on that atrocity finished and focus on the atrocities of the 21st century.

[thebluecrayon]

There are policemen/women who spend their whole career trying to solve cold cases. Families of murder victims who want to see the murderer brought to justice decades later. Would you say to them, it's not worth your time? The easing of pain from tragedy doesn't follow a convenient timeline. There are still living victims of the Holocaust. For them it's not two generations. Even for generations who are, as you say, two generations removed, there is still loss. You have no grandparents on one side of your family perhaps. Your family tree is unknown. You cannot visit your ancestors' homeland because their entire town was destroyed. There's nothing left, not one building, not one gravestone, not one house. You don't know how or where or when they died. Perhaps for you it is over, but I really don't understand why it is for others to judge what the SW Center does and doesn't do. If you don't agree, don't contribute. If you don't understand, seek out someone who does before you render judgment. I am explaining in hopes that those who are quick to judge may take a step back and think "maybe this is something I don't understand" or "maybe I should learn more." There are many well-known Holocaust survivors who speak out all over the world against genocide. That's what they've dedicated themselves to do. That was a choice. SW Center made a choice. You make choices. Live and let live ok?

[arvay]

Unfortunately, this horrible massacre has been morphed by the Zionists into a "conversation stopper" that prevents decent people from openly criticizing Israel.

Every time there's some perceived threat to Israel, you can count on the sudden appearance of a flock of TV programs on the "Holocaust." Personally, I prefer the term"massacre", "holocaust" comes across more like a forest fire.

The Israeli government also uses this to constantly stoke its citizens' fears and paranoia, Arabs become the new Nazis, and anyone who objects to anything Israel does is an anti-Semite.

Meanwhile, the Israeli state as already committed ethnic cleansing and continues to suppress Palestinians in a way that reminds us of the Nazi occupation of Poland.

A disgusting and cynical use of one of history's great tragedies..

[UnknownSoldier]

Thousands of crimes were committed in South Africa during Apartheid, it looks like they got over it. 1 million people were butchered in Rwanda unfortunately the criminals got away and went into the Congo.

The Simon Weisenthal organization should work on bringing those killers to justice. The people who perpertrated the crimes during WWII are not committing crimes today, the same can not be said about the Rwanadan Hutus in the Congo right now.

Stop living in the past people you are missing the new crimes against humanity, because they are the wrong color. The lesson to be learned is that 70 years ago J-E-W-S had the wrong blood, we know now that talk like that denotes low intelligence, but at the time it didn't.

If the phrase "Never Again" only applied to one specific group of people then it really means very little.

[texasaggie]

So true. While they're at it, there are a few people in Israel who should perhaps be deported to the International Criminal Court to face prosecution for murder and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

[Donns]

I hear these people will be given over to the courts along with Bush and Cheny and all their guilty associates. I'm hoping but not holding my breath for this to happen. Criminals have a way of just walking away from their crimes.

[UnknownSoldier]

Don't forget that the Palestians for the most part refuse to live with the J-E-W-I-S-H settlers too. Both sides are wrong for the most part, they should be trying to live together on all of the land not side by side.

[thebluecrayon]

Just because there have been other tragedies does not make prosecuting the criminals of WWII less valid. The question of where the SW center places its priorities is not the right one to be asking. The question to be asking is why aren't there more organizations like this one prosecuting crimes of genocides? The question is why don't people like yourself donate to efforts such as that instead of criticizing those who have spent their lives chasing down justice?

Someone who says "get over it" clearly hasn't lived through or had family live through such a horrendous tragedy. You don't "get over" things like this. You may move on, but the horrific experiences stay with you. In fact, they get imprinted on future generations. I don't expect that you would understand, but at least leave room that other people in this world have different experiences than yourself. This is no better than telling African-Americans to "get over" the injustices of slavery.

I have no idea what this following quote of yours means but I doubt that it's open-minded or insightful: "The lesson to be learned is that 70 years ago J-E-W-S had the wrong blood, we know now that talk like that denotes low intelligence, but at the time it didn't."

[UnknownSoldier]

I'm sorry, I didn't word that correctly, it should read that 70 years ago some EVIL people, thought J-E-W-S had the wrong blood and most people today know that sort of thinking denotes low intelligence, however at the time many respected people remained silent or even quietly agreed with the Evil people.

As a Black American who's ancestors were slaves, who's family had to endure Jim Crow racism, and perpetual second and in some areas 3rd class citizenship. I don't think going back and finding those employers or police officers who may have broken laws 70 or 80 years ago against black Americans is the best direction to head.

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Tribunals so far seemed to have worked. What the Rwandans have done in attempting to get past the "Genocide" that took place there 14 years ago, seems to have worked in part. However, those horrible people who escaped justice in Rwanda are now in the Congo doing worse things, they must be tracked down and brought to justice. What is going on in the Congo is just as bad what the Na$i's did.

I've been to the Congo and I've seen what has been going on with my own eyes, I've listened to the people there, something has to be done because the situation is out of control and it is spreading.