The Nazi-hunters’ remaining prey

Press, 18 February 1983, Page 16

The Nazi-hunters’ remaining prey

When a Nazi war criminal is brought to justice, it doesn't just happen. He has to be tracked down, identified beyond reasonable doubt, closely watched for a long time and eventually arrested, extradited or kidnapped. It is a long and arduous process to which some people have devoted their lives. The most famous Nazihunter is Mr Simon Wiesenthal, who runs a "documentation centre" in Vienna. A survivor of Nazi concentration camps, he has spent the past 38 years tracking former Nazis down and exposing them. With the aid of volunteer

helpers throughout the world, he claims to have brought 1100 Nazi war criminals to justice, though not all of them have been convicted. One of his greatest coups was the capture of Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp. His hardest case was the tracking down of the man who arrested Anne Frank, the Dutch Jewish girl who posthumously became world-fam-ous because of the diary she left behind. Some had cast doubt on the diary’s authenticity, and even on Anne's existence. His work is financed from

private donations, sometimes anonymous, often quite small. He says that his greatest frustrations are the refusal of east European governments to let him consult their files, and the unwillingness of Interpol, the international police organisation based in Paris, to lend a hand in the hunt for the Nazis on the ground that political crimes are not its business. Mr Tuvia Friedman, now the director of a documentation centre in Haifa subsidised by the Israeli Government, helped to bring 2000 Nazis in Gdansk to justice at the end of the war.

Later he left Poland to work in Vienna, where he concen-

trated on finding former Gestapo and SS officers hiding in Austria and German}’: thanks to his efforts, 250 were caught.

In 1946 he went to Israel. He provided the information that eventually led Israeli intelligence agents to Adolf Eichmann, the "butcher of Hungary." in Argentina. Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, the Paris couple who unmasked Klaus Barbie, are relative newcomers to the field. They started their work in the mid-19605. Mr Serge Klarsfeld is president of the association of children of French Jews deported to concentration camps during World War 11.

His wife is German, and not Jewish. She travelled alone to Bolivia in 1971 to find and identify Klaus Barbie.

Mr Klarsfeld went to Damascus last June, at the height of the war in Lebanon, to expose Alois Brunner, one of Adolf Eichmann's deputies who had found refuge in Syria.

According to some estimates, at least 150.000 Nazis classifed as war criminals under the Nuremberg warcrime trial's definition managed to escape detection at the end of World War II: but many of the most notorious leaders have been caught.

Ut the four most senior Nazi war criminals who escaped in 1945. two have been brought to justice — Adolf Eichmann in 1961-62 and Klaus Barbie last week. The other two are still at large. One of them. Dr Josef Mengele. called the "Angel of Death" because of the experiments he carried out on inmates of Auschwitz, is rumoured to be hiding with an unsuspecting Protestant community in a remote area of Paraguay. The other. Mr Heinrich Muller, the former Gestapo chief, has vanished without trace. He is said to be a master of disguises.