July 13

HUNGARY:

Nazi Hunters Start Last Ditch Search in Hungary


A group founded by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal launched a last-ditch
search for Holocaust war criminals in Hungary Tuesday.

The "Operation: Last Chance" campaign will run a telephone hotline and
offer 10,000 euros ($12,370) for information leading to the capture of
Hungarian war criminals.

"The urgency of the project is obvious, time is rapidly running out,"
Ephraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told a news
conference.

"The passage of time does not make guilty people innocent," he said.

Nazi troops occupied Hungary in March 1944 and within three months almost
half a million Jews were sent to concentration camps, with the
collaboration of local authorities.

There are now fewer than 100,000 Jews living in Hungary, compared with
more than 800,000 before World War II, when the country had the region's
largest Jewish community after Poland.

The organization is running similar campaigns in the Baltics, Poland,
Austria, Croatia, and Romania and plans to extend its search to
Argentina, Germany and Ukraine later this year. So far 296 suspects'
names have been submitted.

The organization has tracked down more than 1,000 Nazi war criminals and
played a role in the capture of one of Adolf Hitler's henchmen, Adolf
Eichmann.

But its "Last Chance" campaign had raised concerns from Hungarian
Holocaust experts.

Maria Schmidt, historian and director of Budapest's House of Terror
Museum -- opened in memory of victims of the Hungarian Nazi and communist
dictatorships -- told Reuters the campaign looked controversial.

"It is doubtful what kind of result this campaign could bring, whether
they will find anyone who is still alive and even if they do whether
there'll be evidence to prove what they've done, after so many decades,"
Schmidt said.

She said almost 200 war criminals had been executed after World War II,
and many more imprisoned.

"It would be much better if all this money would be used to thank those
who saved lives, who helped hide Jews...it would serve the future
better," she said.

(source: Reuters)