Launching Operation Last Chance in 2002, Efraim Zuroff spearheaded a vast public campaign to locate and bring to justice the worst suspected Nazi criminals before ill health or death spare them from potential punishment. Zuroff's project yielded the names of over 520 previously unknown suspects in 24 different countries, which has led to many convictions. Combining the thrill of a detective story with the inherent poignancy of the history of World War II and its aftermath, Operation Last Chance delivers the important and moving story of one man's heroic efforts to honor the victims of the Holocaust.

Operation Last Chance: One Man's Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice

Biographies & Memoirs

Zuroff, Efraim

Historical

St. Martin's: Griffin

Sixty years after the end of World War II, not all those who were faithful to the Third Reich are dead€”some members of the Nazi party and their collaborators are still alive, and increasingly difficult to track down. Time is rapidly running out, but Efraim Zuroff won€™t give up. Launching Operation Last Chance in 2002, he spearheaded a vast public campaign to locate and bring to justice the worst suspected Nazi criminals before ill health or death spare them from potential punishment. Despite the passage of many years, the reluctance of many governments to cooperate, and even death threats and a price on his head, Zuroff's project yielded the names of over 520 hereto unknown suspects in 24 different countries and led to dozens of murder investigations, as well as several indictments and extradition requests currently pending.Combining the thrill of a detective story with the inherent poignancy of the history of World War II and its aftermath, O

History

World

St.Martin's Press

During the past fifteen years there has been renewed interest in the efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Sparked by revelations that Allied countries such as the United States, Great Britain, Canada and Australia had afforded a postwar haven to thousands of Nazi collaborators, Nazi-hunters continue their efforts to insure that those responsible for the implementation of the Final Solution are held accountable for their crimes. This task has not been easy as the passage of time, numerous legal and technical difficulties and the reluctance of host governments to deal with this issue have created extremely difficult obstacles in the path of achieving justice. This book tells the story of an individual who has played an important role in the recent efforts of two of the most important agencies in the field of Nazi-hunting - the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) of the U.S. Justice Department. As a researcher in Israel for OSI from 1980 to 1986, Efraim Zuroff found numerous documents and witnesses who helped convict Nazi war criminals living in the United States. He participated in the investigation to determine whether the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele had been arrested and released after the war by the American Army. He also uncovered a means of tracking down thousands of Nazi collaborators who had escaped to the West by utilizing postwar Red Cross records of refugees. It was this discovery which prompted his decision to leave OSI and become coordinator of Nazi war crimes research for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Over the course of the past eight years, the Center has submitted the names of over 1,700 suspected Nazi war criminals to twelve different countries and has helped influence Canada (in 1987), Australia (in 1989) and Great Britain (in 1991) to pass special legislation to enable the prosecution of Nazi war criminals living in those countries. In addition, Sweden, New Zealand and Iceland have also launched special investigations of Nazi war criminals in the wake of the Center's efforts to expose the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Occupation: Nazi-hunter discusses how Nazi-hunting was revived in the seventies, how it was carried out in the eighties and whether it can continue in the nineties. It chronicles the personal story of one of today's Nazi-hunters, a young Jew born after the Holocaust who has devoted his life to the pursuit of justice for the victims of the Holocaust.

Occupation: Nazi-Hunter : The Continuing Search for the Perpetrators of the Holocaust

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Ktav Pub & Distributors Inc

when hundreds of Polish rabbis andyeshiva students were forced to ﬂeeto Lithuania in the wake of the outbreakof World War II and the Soviet invasion ofPoland, Orthodox rabbis in the UnitedStates responded by establishing a specialrescue committee on their behalf calledthe Emergency Committee for War-TornYeshivoth. This committee, which laterbecame known (by its Hebrew name) asthe Vaad haHatzala Rescue Committeeemerged as the official rescue and reliefagency of American Orthodox Jewry during the Holocaust.This book records the history of theVaad haHatzala, which initially focusedexclusively on the rescue of rabbis andyeshiva students, but later expanded itsefforts to include all Iews threatened bythe Nazis regardless of their religiosity oraffiliation. During World War II, the Vaadwas able to help rescue hundreds ofrefugee Torah scholars, most of whomescaped to safety via the Far East, as wellas thousands of Iews in Nazi-occupiedEurope. The help provided by the Vaadalso enabled hundreds of refugee rabbisand yeshiva students to continue intensive Torah studies and maintain theirunique lifestyle.The establishment of The Vaad-ha-Hatzala in November 1939 aroused considerable controversy in the AmericanJewish community, because it violated theorganizational unity for fundraising pur-poses which had been achieved for thefirst time ever ten months previously. TheVaad's initial insistence on rescuing onlyrabbis and yeshiva students was also asource of conﬂict within American Iewry.These problems were clearly reﬂected inthe problematic relations between theVaad ha Hatzala and the Joint Distribu-tion Committee and local federationsthroughout the United States. The difficult dilemmas faced by the leaders ofAmerican Jewry and the bitter controversies regarding the rescue efforts are majorfocus of this study.

Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States: The Activities of the Vaad Ha-Hatzala Rescue Committee, 1939-1945

Religion & Spirituality

A famous Nazi hunter and a descendent of Nazi collaborators team up on a journey to uncover Lithuania’s Holocaust secrets. This remarkable book traces the quest for the truth about the Holocaust in Lithuania by two ostensible enemies: Rūta a descendant of the perpetrators, Efraim a descendant of the victims. Rūta Vanagaitė, a successful Lithuanian writer, was motivated by her recent discoveries that some of her relatives had played a role in the mass murder of Jews and that Lithuanian officials had tried to hide the complicity of local collaborators. Efraim Zuroff, a noted Israeli Nazi hunter, had both professional and personal motivations. He had worked for years to bring Lithuanian war criminals to justice and to compel local authorities to tell the truth about the Holocaust in their country. The facts that his maternal grandparents were born in Lithuania and that he was named for a great-uncle who was murdered with his family in Vilnius with the active help of Lithuanians made his search personal as well. Our People exposes the significant role in implementing the Final Solution played by local political leaders and the prewar Lithuanian administration that remained in place during the Nazi occupation. It also tackles the sensitive issue of the motivation of thousands of ordinary Lithuanians who were complicit in the murder of their Jewish neighbors. At the heart of the book, these are the issues that Rūta and Efraim discuss, debate, and analyze as they crisscross the country to visit dozens of Holocaust mass murder sites in Lithuania and neighboring Belarus. This book follows them on their remarkable journey as they search for neglected graves, interview eyewitnesses, and uncover hints of the rich life that had existed in hundreds of Jewish communities throughout Lithuania.

Our People: Discovering Lithuania's Hidden Holocaust

Vanagaitė, Rūta

Community & Culture

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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