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July 12, 2002/Av 3 5762, Vol. 54, No. 43
Rewards offered for Nazi info
ADAM B. ELLICK
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
VILNIUS, Lithuania - A program offering $10,000 rewards for information that leads to the conviction and punishment of any Nazi war criminal worldwide is an effort to turn up credible witnesses on Nazi crimes before it's too late
Such a witness - an essential and oft-missing ingredient in war crime trials - is a tough find some 60 years after the Holocaust, since most suspects and bystanders are elderly or already deceased. Also, most crimes were committed in remote locations to ensure secrecy. What's more, national governments are often less than anxious to prosecute their own citizens because this could backfire in elections.
Operation Last Chance is organized by Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, and funded by Targum Shlishi, a charitable foundation in Florida headed by Aryeh Rubin.
Although an international program under the aegis of the Wiesenthal Center, this week's announcement of the program was made in the Baltics - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In these countries, the topic is especially pertinent, and Zuroff expects the most responses from them.
The Baltics had among the highest rates of local collaboration with the Nazis and among the highest murder rates of the local Jewish population during World War II. Still, not a single resident has served one minute in jail for Holocaust-related crimes since these post-Communist nations regained independence in 1991.
"In countries that have never taken a proactive stance, we realized that we have to do much of the work," said Zuroff on Monday in Vilnius, Lithuania's capital. "If we find the criminals and evidence, it will be that much easier for the local prosecutors to handle such cases, cases they would never otherwise have done themselves."
Anyone can anonymously submit information to either the Wiesenthal Center in Israel, the local Jewish communities in all three Baltic nations or to the State Prosecutor's Office.
Zuroff and Rubin see the fight to prosecute war criminals as a victory not only for world Jewry but also for these growing democracies.
"This is the last chance for people of Lithuania to redeem the injustice that has been done to the Jewish people," said Rubin. "The stain upon the Baltics will last for a long time if some of these killers are not brought to justice."
More than 94 percent of the Jews in Lithuania and Latvia were murdered during the Holocaust. In many communities, Jews were physically attacked by their neighbors before the Nazis arrived.
Only 5,000 Jews lived in Estonia before the war, and 4,000 escaped to Russia and survived. Of the 1,000 that remained, only seven survived.
Today, there are approximately 3,000 Jews living in each of the three countries.
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