The fact that Bernhard Frank was a mere SS penpusher, not the Holocaust's prime mover, calls into question Gould's motives

Mark Gould is not the first person in recent years to adopt a false identity to try and track down Nazi war criminals and/or infiltrate neo-Nazi organisations. Israeli journalist Yaron Svoray posed as an Australian neo-Nazi in the early 1990s, and several years later, American private investigator Steve Rambam posed as a history professor (from a nonexistent university in Belize) to attempt to obtain incriminating confessions from Nazi war criminals residing in Canada. Both Svoray and Rambam were able to obtain information that ultimately helped produce practical results.

In Svoray's case, a second world war Nazi who was actively helping young neo-Nazis in Germany whom he identified, led to the apprehension in Argentina and prosecution in Italy of Gestapo officer Erich Priebke, who played a major role in the 24 March 1944 massacre of 335 hostages in the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome. Rambam's sting operation yielded the evidence that helped convict SS officer Julius Viel for the March 1945 murder of seven inmates of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. In both cases, the investigators turned over their findings to the pertinent judicial authorities in order to facilitate justice, which was ultimately achieved.

That element is precisely what is missing in the story presented yesterday with much fanfare by Mark Gould at his press conference in New York. If Gould's real goal is to help bring important Holocaust perpetrators to justice, why didn't he ever turn to the German police or to the Zentrale Stelle, the central office for the clarification of Nazi crimes, which has played a critical role in the successful prosecution in the Federal Republic of thousands of Nazi war criminals?

In the press release distributed on Tuesday, Gould points to two factors to explain his course of action: the "cover-up of his [the suspected Nazi Bernhard Frank's] identity" and the "lack of criminal remedies". These claims, however, ring particularly hollow in view of the fact that Frank has lived openly in Germany under his own name for decades (and even published his memoirs five years ago), and Germany's impressive recent successes in prosecuting local Nazi criminals, which earned the country the highest grade possible in the Wiesenthal Centre's 2010 annual status report on the worldwide investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals. Another pertinent question in this regrad, is why Gould waited four long years to reveal Frank's existence. Given his advanced age of 97, such a delay would almost certainly jeopardise any chance of his being brought to trial, let alone being punished for his crimes.

A closer look at the allegations made by Gould regarding Frank's alleged role in Holocaust crimes, raises additional important questions concerning the credibilty of his project. According to Gould, Frank played a "pivotal role in the Nazis' extermination policy", a claim based primarily on the fact that his signature appears on a copy of an order dated 28 July 1941 issued by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, which orders the shooting of Jews in the Pripjet Marshes in Belarus. But the fact of the matter is, that Frank was a minor figure in this regard, who had absolutely no authority whatsoever to issue such an order or to effect its implementation in any way. His job was to check the wording of the document to make sure it was in accordance with Nazi ideology.

The Nazis who determined the anti-Jewish policies of the Third Reich were people like Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich, and certainly not minor officials like Frank. In fact, Frank is not even mentioned a single time in any of the scholarly research on the units in which he served, such as Martin Cueppers' book Die Waffen-SS, der Kommandostab Reichsfuehrer-SS und die Judenvernichtung 1939-1945 (The Waffen-SS, the Command Staff of the Reichsfuehrer-SS and the Annihilation of the Jews 1939-1945) or in any of the scholarly accounts of the Holocaust in Belarus.

In other words, Gould has clearly exaggerated Frank's role and importance in the context of Holocaust history, apparently in order to enhance his chances of achieving fame and fortune. His choice of weapon in this case, a civil suit rather than a criminal prosecution, is clear evidence of such and, according to his press release, there is already a book on the way, as well as a documentary film.

I do not believe that we should begrudge genuine researchers devoted to tracking down Nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice their share of the glory and financial compensation, but this project can only give Nazi-hunting a bad name, and possibly hamper and even undermine the last efforts to bring to justice those who bear genuine criminal responsibility for the crimes of the Holocaust.

There is no doubt that Bernhard Frank is, to this day, a passionate and unrepentant Nazi, whose views and support for the Nazi regime are utterly repugnant, but when it comes to justice, the bottom line is: what were the crimes actually committed and what was the extent of criminal responsibility for a given individual? As exciting and newsworthy as Mark Gould's story may appear at first glance, he is not the hero he makes himself out to be.

guardian.co.uk