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THE world's leading Nazi hunter doesn't want to be too critical of the Australian Government for doing nothing against Nazi war criminals hiding in our midst.
Ephraim Zuroff's annual report on Nazi war criminals, written for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, rates Australia as the only major western country never to have taken successful legal action against a suspected Nazi . But over lunch last week, he was more generous.
Australia, he said, "took hundreds of war criminals after the war, and has been a haven for more than 60 years, but I would put that down to apathy and ignorance rather than anything sinister".
That said, Zuroff is a man on a mission - with two suspected Australian war criminals in his sights. And he knows getting the Howard Government offside isn't the way to get his targets extradited to face justice.
He met Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and Justice Minister Chris Ellison and declared they "recognised the importance of prosecuting war criminals". That's called painting them into a corner.
In fact, Australia has harboured known Nazi war criminals and sympathisers for 60 years, and even put them on the staff of ASIO to fight against communists and subversives of the left.
Konrad Kalejs was the worst. He was suspected of running a death camp in Latvia, and fled the US and Canada when he was accused of war crimes. But once in Australia, he was given the job of vetting migrants from Europe's east. He died in 2001 fighting extradition.
Wartime Nazi propagandist and rabid anti-communist Lyenko Urbancic died on Wednesday after becoming a key right-wing factional figure in the 1970s NSW Liberal Party.
But Zuroff is prepared to put this all aside if he can get co-operation in handing over his two current targets.
Lajos Polgar, 89, of Melbourne, admits he was a leader in Hungary's Nazi corps Arrow Cross but denies he committed atrocities. Zuroff handed new evidence against Polgar to the Australian Federal Police last week.
His other target is Perth pensioner Charles Zentai, 83, who is fighting extradition to Hungary, where he is facing war crimes charges including murder of a Jewish teenager. Zentai denies the charge and is fighting extradition.
The number of Zuroff's new investigations into suspected war criminals has doubled in the past year to 659. He hasn't counted the Nazis he has caught but reckons it could total up to 50.
And he insists it is not too late. "If we can bring just 10 per cent of those we are hunting to justice, then we have had an enormous victory," he said.
Zuroff bears the name Ephraim after his mother's uncle, who was murdered by Lithuanian vigilantes in 1941. But his work is not personal.
Rather, he's "driven by an absolute certainty in the justice of my cause. What will prevent another Holocaust is to put the perpetrators on trial - not to assassinate them out of revenge".
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