THE Simon Wiesenthal Centre has named two new Lithuanian war crimes suspects who Lithuanian informants say went to Australia after World War II.

The two allegedly participated in the murder of at least 3000 Jews in the Lithuanian town of Rokiskis (Rakishok in Yiddish) in the summer and autumn of 1941.

They were among 184 war crimes suspects who informants in Lithuania reported in the first year of Operation Last Chance, a new Nazi-hunting project.

The project offers a $US10,000 reward for information which could lead to the conviction and punishment of Nazi war criminals in the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Project co-ordinator Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Jerusalem office, said this week he knew nothing yet about when and how the two suspects went to Australia, whether they had stayed or whether they were dead or alive.

" We attempted to trace their immigration, but did not find proof of their arrival in Australia," he said.
Zuroff said Chief Prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevicius, of the Lithuanian Procurator-General's Special Investigations Division, was at present investigating the murders in Rokiskis.

The centre launched Operation Last Chance in the Baltics last July with assistance and financing from Targum Shlishi Foundation of Miami headed by Aryeh Rubin.

Zuroff told the AJN if he received sufficient funding he would launch the project in Australia where he believed there was "good potential for serious information".

The centre hoped to launch the project in Germany, Austria, the Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, Poland and Hungary this year.