In early September, I embarked
on a trip to Poland, Romania and Austria to announce the launch of
Operation Last Chance: Rewards for Justice in those countries. Operation
Last Chance offers a $10,000 reward for information leading to the
arrest and conviction of Nazi war criminals.
The program, initiated in 2002, was conceived and is funded by
my nonprofit foundation Targum Shlishi in partnership with the
Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which administers
the program. Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center’s
Israel office, and I have been asked repeatedly: What is the purpose
of pursuing Nazi war criminals 58 years after the war? After all,
these criminals are old and frail. We, the Jewish people, have
more daunting and immediate issues with which to deal. Why bother?
The legendary 94-year-old Simon Wiesenthal has customarily responded
to that question by saying, “When I go to heaven, the victims
of the Holocaust will confront me and say, ‘You were the
lucky one, you survived. What did you do with your life?’ I
will be able to respond, ‘I did not forget you.’ ” He
speaks for all of us.
When I conceived Operation Last Chance, I didn’t know what
effect it would have. At the very least, I believed it would help
undo a terrible legacy of inaction — a legacy that can be
ascribed, albeit in very different ways, to both the Jewish people
and the countries harboring Nazi war criminals. Few countries pursued
these killers. In those that did, relatively few criminals were
brought to justice. Of those, only a minute percentage received
the severe punishment they deserved.
The simple but sad fact is that for the most part, the Nazi war
criminals who perpetrated the largest and most gruesome genocide
in human history got away with it. To my mind, now is our last
chance to act before the murderers die peacefully in their beds,
with their children and grandchildren wistfully looking on — a
fate they certainly do not deserve.
The primary focus of our activities in bringing Nazi war criminals
to justice is to prod reluctant governments to prosecute those
who participated in the well-organized killing machine that murdered
one-third of our people. In an ideal world, these governments would
be moved to prosecute past misdeeds out of a sense of remorse,
justice and/or conscience. But our firsthand experience with Operation
Last Chance reveals that in most cases, it is political expediency
that motivates them. It is world opinion, political pressure and
the status of pending European Union membership that nudges the
haltingly slow wheels of justice.
In most of the countries where Operation Last Chance is or will
be operational (the program has been launched in Lithuania, Latvia,
Estonia, Poland, Romania and Austria, with Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary
and Germany scheduled for launch later in the year), Holocaust
consciousness is not part of the zeitgeist. In fact, a revisionist
view of history has resulted in citizens in most of these countries
viewing their predecessors as victims of Nazi terror and not as
participants in the murder of Jews.
Even in Germany, where the Holocaust is an integral part of the
consciousness of the nation, incredibly there is of late a public
discussion of the terrible German suffering during World War II.
More disconcerting is that Holocaust denial is leeching its way
into the very fabric of the local cultures.
Some 15 months after its inauguration, Operation Last Chance has
yielded information on 241 suspects, with 55 names submitted to
prosecution agencies. In Lithuania, local prosecutors have opened
three murder investigations involving 22 suspects, and we expect
additional investigations to be initiated in other countries. Also
significant is the extensive media coverage coupled with an advertising
campaign that has brought the horror of the Holocaust to the public
consciousness in the 10 targeted countries.
The subtle but clear message: If you seek to harm a Jew, there
will be those, perhaps unborn at the time of the crimes, who eventually
will seek justice. This is particularly important in light of the
centrality of the “Jew as victim” message that is a
legacy of the Holocaust.
It is never too late. In the last three and one-half years, 24
Nazi war criminals have been convicted in the United States, Canada,
Poland, Lithuania, France and Germany.
While we do not cast the sins of the fathers upon their children,
we emphatically hold the grandparents responsible for their crimes
against our people, and for crimes against humanity. Let those
murderers of our families, be they 75 or 105, fear that knock on
the door until their dying day, that they might yet face retribution.
To me, the relevant question is not why Operation Last Chance
58 years after the war, but why did we do so little to pursue Nazi
war criminals?
How can we appeal to the world’s judicial sense of justice
when we ourselves were and continue to be asleep at the wheel?
Just remembering, lighting the annual memorial candle, does not
send the needed message to those who would dare do it one more
time. n
Aryeh Rubin, a Miami-based investment manager, is the founder
and director of the Targum Shlishi Foundation.
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