Slightly more than three years have passed since “Operation: Last
Chance” was initially launched (July 8, 2002) in Vilnius , Lithuania
. To date it had already been initiated in nine different countries
and we can begin to assess its results and impact.
It was clear to us from the beginning, that we were embarking
on a project which ostensibly had a narrow focus - facilitating
the prosecution and punishment of Nazi war criminals – but actually
had considerable potential to address far broader issues with wide-ranging
implications. In that respect, while the attempts to identify,
expose and help prosecute Holocaust perpetrators were intrinsically
of great practical, judicial, and moral significance, they were
also the backdrop for the struggle to ensure historical truth in
post-Communist societies and an important element in the ongoing
struggle against burgeoning European anti-Semitism. Indeed, the
methods chosen to publicize “Operation: Last Chance” - press conferences,
ad campaigns, and op-ed pieces – were all tools which had the ability
to focus public attention not only on the search for the killers,
but also to initiate and foster a public debate on the broader
issues of local complicity in Holocaust crimes and the role of
anti-Semitism in the annihilation of European Jewry.
In summarizing the results achieved to date by “Operation: Last
Chance,” the obvious place to begin is in terms of the prosecution
of Holocaust perpetrators. To date, we have made considerable progress
in two major cases – one in Hungary and another in Croatia .
The first is the case of Charles (Karoly) Zentai, an Hungarian
army officer who is accused of the murder of at least one Jewish
teenager in Budapest and conducted manhunts of Jews in the fall
of 1944 when the fascist Arrow Cross ruled Hungary. Zentai escaped
to Australia in 1950 but we tracked him down to a suburb of Perth
, where he has lived for the past 55 years, after receiving evidence
regarding his crimes from Peter Balasz's brother, who currently
lives in Budapest . Based on the evidence supplied by the Wiesenthal
Center , the Hungarian government issued an international warrant
for the arrest of Charles Zentai in March 2005, and shortly thereafter
submitted a request to the Australian government for his extradition
to stand trial in Hungary . In August 2005, Australian Justice
Minister Chris Ellison signed the extradition request and an appeal
process by Zentai will commence on September 21, 2005 in Perth
. We are hopeful that he will be extradited to Hungary before the
end of the year and will be put on trial in early 2006.
The second case is of the chief of police of the Croatian city
of Požega . During the years 1941-1942, Milivoj Ašner played an
extremely active role in the persecution and deportation to concentration
camps where they were murdered of the city's 300 Jews and hundreds
of Serbs and Gypsies. On June 30, 2004, the day that the Wiesenthal
Center and Targum Shlishi launched “Operation: Last Chance” in
Croatia we submitted a dossier documenting Ašner's crimes in Požega,
which was prepared by researcher Alen Budaj of Zagreb and contained
copies of anti-Jewish / Serb and Gypsy decrees signed by Ašner
himself, to Croatian President Stjepan Mesic and to Attorney-General
Mladen
Bajic. A criminal investigation was officially initiated against
Ašner, who shortly thereafter escaped to Austria , where he had
lived for four and a half decades after World War II to escape
prosecution by the Yugoslav authorities.
In meetings with Bajic and Požega district court officials in
July 2005, we learned that Ašner will be indicted in the near future
and that Croatia will ask for his extradition to stand trial in
Požega. If he is not extradited, Croatia may choose to prosecute
him in absentia. At the same time, Ašner who is living at Paulitschgasse
8/III in Klagenfurt , is also under investigation in Austria ,
which also indicated that it is seriously considering his prosecution.
In addition to these two cases several other suspects are currently
under investigation in Germany , Romania , Lithuania , and other
countries, which might result in prosecutions. To date, we have
received the names of 389 suspects, 81 of whom have been submitted
to local prosecutors after being verified and investigated by the
Wiesenthal Center.
Beyond the practical progress in terms of prosecution, “Operation:
Last Chance” has been able to focus public attention on the inter-related
issues of local complicity in the crimes of the Holocaust, the
rewriting of history textbooks in newly-democratic Central and
Eastern Europe, and the manner in which post-Soviet and post-Communist
societies respond to Holocaust-related issues such as: acknowledgement
of guilt, commemoration of the victims, documentation of the history
of the Holocaust, restitution and education. Whether it was by
mounting the most extensive ad campaign ever launched on a Holocaust
issue in Romania or setting off a national debate on the validity
and necessity of the “Operation: Last Chance” hotline in Poland,
which considered itself exclusively a nation of victims and not
of perpetrators, this initiative has captured the attention of
millions of Europeans and has squarely put Holocaust issues on
the national agendas of at least nine countries, which is precisely
what Targum Shlishi and the Wiesenthal Center hoped to achieve
by launching the project.
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