'Last Nazi Hunter' still has work to do

They call him the Last Nazi Hunter.

For the past 27 years, Efraim Zuroff has travelled around the world, tracking down those who believed they had long since gotten away with murder. His mission: to expose and help prosecute those who participated in the killing and persecution of Jews and others during the Second World War. His numbers: About 3,000 suspects tracked down.

"The overwhelming majority of the Nazi war criminals in the world today are not hiding. They're living under their own names. And they think at this point in time, no one had found them yet," said Mr. Zuroff, the director of Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Jerusalem branch. Mr. Wiesenthal, who died two years ago, was a survivor of the Nazi death camps who dedicated his life to documenting the crimes of the Holocaust and to hunting down the perpetrators still at large.

For Mr. Zuroff, 59, there is still work to do. He's still searching for the remaining war criminals, many of whom emigrated to western democracies or South America. But he acknowledges the era of pursuing Nazi war criminals will soon come to a close.

"That's clear. Because the people are dying. The original mission, the efforts to bring those criminals to justice, will end in a few years," he said. But it's not over yet, he insists. "People without a conscience live longer. Much less stress."

Mr. Zuroff, who described his work as "one-third detective work, one-third historical research and one-third political lobbying," will speak about his experiences Thursday at the University of Ottawa, as part of Holocaust Education Week.

His greatest coup was exposing and mounting a campaign to prosecute Dinko Sakic, a commander at the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac, where tens of thousands of civilians were killed. The war criminal was found living in Argentina. In 1998, the 77-year-old was extradited to Croatia and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Worldwide, there have been 69 convictions in the last six years. Three were in Canada, with the bulk in the United States, at 34. A report by Mr. Zuroff gave Canada an 'F' for investigating or prosecuting Nazi war criminals. Since 1994, Canada has initiated 21 cases and obtained eight denaturalizations against defendants living in Canada, the report said. None of them have been deported.

Two defendants have left the country voluntarily, while six died during the legal proceedings. Three won their cases.

"Lawyers for these defendants have been able to tie down the courts for years, and prevent their clients from getting kicked out. It's simply outrageous," he said.

Ottawa Citizen