ZUROFF: NO LIVING NAZI WAR CRIMINAL SHOULD ESCAPE JUSTICE

BELGRADE, JULY 15 /SRNA/ - Director of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Efraim Zuroff said that many Nazi war criminals have died, but that if any are still alive, the center will do everything to bring them to justice.

"We hope they will be punished in the country where they are currently living," Zuroff told RTS.

Zuroff pointed out that the problem is that almost all Anglo-Saxon countries "handled the whole matter completely the wrong way," adding that only the United States had managed to bring 109 people to justice, not by convicting them but by deporting them.

"I submitted nearly 500 names of perpetrators who murdered Jews during the war to the Australian government - in fact, not only Jews, but many other victims as well. Australia, however, failed to punish a single one of them," Zuroff said.

He pointed out that no one had been punished in New Zealand either, while Canada had even passed legislation that had effectively prevented those people from being punished as they should have been.

Zuroff, who played a key role in bringing Ustasha war criminal Dinko Šakić to justice, said he was the first to persuade the Argentine authorities to allow Šakić's extradition.

"Whenever a journalist interviewed him, he would say, `What are you talking about? The Jews ran Jasenovac and managed the camp.` That is Holocaust distortion and complete nonsense," Zuroff said.

He warned of the dangers of historical revisionism and the distortion of historical memory.

"That is precisely the problem. History is very easy to distort. It is very easy for people to spread such lies, and suddenly they appear to bear no responsibility whatsoever. It is complete nonsense," Zuroff explained.

Zuroff pointed out that the Nazis did not voluntarily abandon their ideology but were defeated militarily, with many of them ending up in prison.

"That is why I say that justice is the strongest weapon against Holocaust distortion. Let me give you an example. I provided the New Zealand authorities with the name of a man called Jonas Pukas, who was a member of a Lithuanian killing squad. He told the police officer questioning him, `When they were shot, the Jews sounded like geese.` That may not in itself be Holocaust distortion, but how can someone utter such a monstrous sentence in a country that is unwilling to bring anyone to trial? It is horrific," Zuroff believes.