Feb. 4



POLAND:

Nazi Hunters Praise New Polish War Crimes Probes



Nazi hunters Tuesday praised Poland's decision to open new war crimes
investigations and expressed hope they would at last bring to justice
men suspected of the mass murder of Jews in World War II.

Prosecutors launched a probe Monday into three men, two living in the
United States and one in Germany, suspected of committing genocide as SS
death camp guards from 1942 to 1944.

Another investigation was opened in January by Poland's Institute for
National Remembrance (IPN) into another suspect now thought to be in
Costa Rica. The IPN investigates crimes committed by the Nazi and
communist regimes before 1989.

``The renewed judicial activity of the IPN is one of the most positive
developments in efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice,'' Efraim
Zuroff, a Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, told
Reuters by telephone.

The IPN said it was too early to say if the investigations would lead to
the extradition and prosecution of old men suspected of committing war
crimes 60 years ago.

``If these crimes have not expired under the statute of limitations, we
have an obligation to investigate them,'' said Witold Kulesza, chief IPN
war crimes investigator. ``But I can't say what chances we have of
securing the suspects' extradition.''

Of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, an estimated three million
died in German-occupied Poland, many in the gas chambers of death camps
such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka.

Poland held a series of war crimes trials after the war, but nearly a
decade elapsed after the collapse of communism before that effort was
renewed with the creation of the IPN in 1998.

``It has an immense moral and pedagogical significance that these crimes
do not go unpunished,'' said Feliks Tych, head of the Jewish Historical
Institute in Warsaw.

``In many cases, nothing has been done for decades and murderers have
been living in peace in Latin America, the U.S. or in a village near
Lublin (Poland). The passage of time does not matter; these matters must
not be left buried in ash.''

SUSPECTS NAMED

The IPN's prosecutor in Lublin, southeast Poland, said he was confident
of gathering sufficient evidence to file charges against and seek the
extradition of U.S. residents Bronislaw H. and Jacob R., and Dymitro S.,
who lives in Germany.

The three are suspected of undergoing SS training before joining the
``Aktion Reinhardt'' operation to wipe out Jews living in the General
Government, German-occupied southern and central Poland, where most death
camps were sited.

``It is our intention to extradite them, but first we must gather
sufficient evidence to present formal charges in Poland,'' prosecutor
Andrzej Witkowski told Reuters. The suspects are thought to have been
born in what is now Ukraine.

Witkowski also wants to establish the real identity of a notorious camp
guard known as ``Ivan the Terrible,'' who was stationed at the Treblinka
camp northeast of Warsaw where over 800,000 Jews were killed.

Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk was found in 1993 not to have been Ivan the
Terrible by the Israeli Supreme Court, which overturned an earlier death
sentence after evidence pointed to another suspect.

The IPN's branch in southern Katowice is also investigating a suspect
called Bogdan Koziy, who allegedly killed dozens of Jews while serving as
a policeman in then eastern Poland.

``He is currently living in Costa Rica. We will most likely apply for his
extradition,'' prosecutor Ewa Koj told Reuters.

(source: Reuters)