The campaign, which is carried at European level, was initiated by Simon Wiesenthal
Center and aims to identify and send to justice the Nazi
war criminals and their collaborators, which will be found
guilty of murders against Jewish people in the Second World
War.
Bucuresti, August 12, 2004. Tempo Advertising created and implemented Operation
Last chance, initiated by the Israeli-based Simon Wiesenthal
Center. The agency involved pro-bono in this project, Romania
being the only country where this operation is carried with
the support of an advertising agency.
„The campaign was launched in the
Baltics and extended in Europe – mainly Romania, Austria
and Poland and other countries in the region. In Romania
we benefited from the most professional communication campaign
– created by Tempo Advertising, which contributed to the
successful results registered so far,” Efraim Zuroff – the
Head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said.
The message of the campaign is that
the time does not decrease the responsibility of the guilty
ones at all and is communicated to the public through newspaper
ads in the centrals and local media, outdoor banners and
a TV announcement. The creative concept starts from the fact
that the victims were not just names, but real people whose
lives were cut in a brutal and irrational way.
“ Those who committed murders are
guilty and if they have been not charged so far it doesn’t
mean that they are innocent or shouldn’t be sent to justice,”
dr. Efraim Zuroff said at the launch of the campaign.
Operation Last Chance intends to give
people the „last chance” to reveal war criminals as they
are still alive, to rehabilitate the history truth and to
make people aware of those tragedies. “We call people to
reveal any information about the free Nazi criminals, wherever
they would hide in the world,” Efraim Zuroff said.
In Romania, Operation Last Chance
was initiated in 2003 and was first carried in Iasi, where
some 12.000 Jewish people were murdered in 1941. The campaign
expanded at the national level in July this year. People
who have information about war criminals are invited to call
the toll-free line 0800 800 125 or to write to Simon Wiesenthal
Center: str. Mendele nr. 1, Ierusalim 92147, Israel. The
information will be collected and analyzed by Simon Wiesenthal
Center and the Jewish Community in Romania and those which
will prove true will be forwarded to the Romanian authorities,
which assured full support to this campaign. Any information
that will lead to identifying, sending, convicting and punishing
the guilty ones is rewarded with 10,000 USD. The rewards
will be supported by the Florida-based Targum Shlishi Foundation.
Simon Wiesenthal Center has so far
received about 80 inputs (messages, letters, phone calls)
from people. The identity of the suspects is confidential
by the moment the information is verified and requests are
sent to the Romanian authorities.
Since January 2001 when the Operation
Last Chance was launched, a number of 308 suspects were identified
in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Austria, Romania,
Poland, Croatia, Hungary, Germany, and other countries.
Baratiei 31, sector 3, Bucuresti
Tel: (4021) 31 41 51 5
Fax: (4021) 31 32 33 0
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