August 12, 2004  
 
  Tempo Advertising implements „Last Chance” campaign
 
 

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.

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