65 years after Holocaust he still has war criminals in his sights

60
THE SUNDAY POST/ January 17, 2010
65 years after Holocaust he still has war criminals in his sights
By Steven Bowron
HE saying “old
T
sins cast long
shadows” doesn’t
even begin to cover
it when it comes to
the Holocaust.
Even 65 years after
the world became fully
aware of the genocide
of Jews and gypsies,
fresh reminders of the
crime of the 20th
Century still regularly
appear.
Miep Gies, one of the
Dutch citizens who
shielded Anne Frank and
her family from the Nazis
and who was instrumental
in saving her famous
diaries, died last Monday
aged 100.
Earlier in December was the
theft of the infamous “Arbeit
macht frei” (work makes you
free) sign that hung above the
gates of the Auschwitz
extermination camp, later
retrieved after a nationwide
hunt across Poland.
Murder
And in November the trial
of alleged former Sobibor
guard, Lithuanian John
Demjanjuk who faces 29,000
counts of murder, began in
Munich.
Indeed there’s no let-up in
the hunt for Nazi war
criminals across the globe,
despite the majority of them
now being in their 90s.
It was in acknowledgement
of the former SS men and
women’s advancing years that
in July 2002 Operation Last
Chance was launched by
Dr Efraim Zuroff, known as
the Last Nazi Hunter.
Director of the Simon
Wiesenthal Institute in Los
Angeles, Dr Zuroff, who is
based in Jerusalem, produces
an annual status report on
developments in tracking
down these fugitives.
The last of these, covering
April 2008 to March 2009,
showed 700 ongoing
investigations, a figure he
describes as “the tip of the
iceberg”.
Incredibly there were also
80 new investigations.
Rather than hunting Nazis,
Dr Zuroff is visiting Scotland
next week to promote his
book, Operation Last Chance.
That’s not to say none have
ever been tracked down here.
There’s
still
plenty
of work
for the
Last Nazi Hunter
■ Dr Zuroff (above) is still on the trail of Dr Aribert Heim (below left). The so-called “Doctor Death” of Mauthausen concentration
camp (below right) supposedly died in 1992 but without evidence of this, Zuroff’s file can’t be closed. Bottom — Miep Gies, the
Dutchwoman who was the last surviving person to have helped shield Anne Frank from the Nazis. She died last week aged 100.
injected inmates with petrol
and removed organs from
still-living victims at
Mauthausen concentration
camp.
Heim’s son Rudiger has
claimed his father died in
Egypt in 1992 having lived
there for 30 years.
Unconvinced, Efraim went
to Chile with a documentary
crew in 2008 to talk to Heim’s
illegitimate daughter,
Waltraud, whom he believed
was in touch with her father.
“She denied she had ever
met him,” says Efraim.
“I’ve never met any Nazis
face-to-face but I’ve spoken to
the children of them and they
always defend their parents.
“I think there’s a definite
possibility Heim died in Cairo
in 1992 but I can’t sign off on
the case because there’s no
forensic evidence to support
that conclusion.”
Incensed
Arrest
Anton Gecas is the only
person living in Scotland to
have an arrest warrant issued
against them for Nazi war
crimes.
While he spent his twilight
years running a guesthouse
in Edinburgh’s Moston
Terrace, he’d been accused of
the mass murder of up to
34,000 Jews and civilians in
Lithuania.
He died aged 85 in hospital
in September 2001 before he
could stand trial.
“He was buried under a
false name in an Edinburgh
cemetery because his family
thought there would be
protests,” says Dr Zuroff in a
Brooklyn accent, not lost after
40 years living in Israel.
“You could say that was a
historic form of justice
■ Anton Gecas.
because his victims were
buried in mass graves with no
funeral.
“I once door-stepped Gecas
at his home in Edinburgh,
though he wouldn’t come and
talk to me.
“He just shouted for me to
contact his lawyer.”
Gecas successfully took
Efraim to the High Court and
Court of Session to stop
publication of his book
accusing him of war
atrocities.
Lord Cowie issued a writ
against the Southampton
publishers effectively
preventing the book coming
out anywhere.
But Ivan the Terrible, as he
was called by his alleged
victims, lost a libel action
against Scottish Television
after its 1992 documentary
stated he was responsible for
war crimes in Lithuania and
Belarus. This time the judge
concluded Gecas had carried
out war crimes against Soviet
citizens, though no charges
were ever brought due to
“lack of evidence”.
To this day Efraim is
grateful to STV for helping
highlight the issue.
However, his appreciation
didn’t stop his feelings of deep
frustration at the Gecas case
and Efraim has a similar
sense of being thwarted in his
search for the No. 1 Nazi still
at large, Dr Aribert Heim.
Known as Doctor Death, he
In Chile Efraim came up
against protests, though on
this occasion these were
from a lone neo-Nazi incensed
at his presence in the country.
“If push came to shove I
could have taken him because
he definitely wasn’t armed
and I was a lot bigger than
him!” jokes the 62-year-old.
“But I’ve had death threats
against me and a price put on
my head. The fact I’m still
here proves it wasn’t enough.
“Sometimes I use
bodyguards, though not on a
day-to-day basis in Israel.”
But after disappointments
like Heim and Gecas there are
two success stories for Nazi
hunters.
There’s the imminent
extradition of Charles Zentai
from Australia to Hungary to
stand trial for the murder of
an 18-year-old Jewish man in
November 1944. And there’s
the ongoing trial of John
Demjanjuk.
“I will be going to Germany
to see the trial,” says Efraim.
“I think he’ll be found guilty in
Munich and be imprisoned for
15 years, which should see
him out.
“I got a call last week from
the office of the President of
Croatia who apparently wants
to honour me for my work.
“I don’t know what I’ll be
getting, but I’m heading to
Croatia and will be stopping
off in Munich while I’m in
Europe.”
■ Dr Zuroff is at Waterstone’s
in Newton Mearns next
Sunday at 6.30 pm and
Blackwell, South Bridge,
Edinburgh, on Monday,
January 26 at 6.15.