Nazi hunter brands Austria a "paradise" for Nazis

Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 2/1/06 | Reuters

[NormsRevenge]

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria's legal system and its insufficient zeal in investigating alleged crimes committed under Hitler's Third Reich make it a "paradise for Nazi war criminals," a top Nazi hunter said on Wednesday.

Frustrated at slow progress in finding suspected war criminals in Austria and bringing them to court, Simon Wiesenthal Center director Efraim Zuroff came to Vienna for talks with ministers aimed at accelerating the process.

"The law in this country does more to protect Nazis than to bring them to justice," Zuroff told reporters after talks with Austria's ministers for justice and the interior.

"There is a system here that makes Austria a paradise for Nazi war criminals, plain and simple," he added.

Austria's interior ministry declined to comment while the justice ministry was not immediately available for comment.

One case Zuroff raised in his meetings was that of Milivoj Asner, who fled Croatia after being exposed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and now lives in the southern Austrian city of Klagenfurt.

Zagreb has asked Vienna to extradite him but Austria has so far refused on the grounds he is Austrian and is therefore ineligible for extradition, Zuroff said.

Austria is investigating the accusations against Asner, which include overseeing the deportation of hundreds of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies to Nazi concentration camps.

Because Asner is alleged to have played a part in people's killings but not to have killed anyone himself, he cannot be tried in Austria because a statute of limitations applies to such crimes, Zuroff said.

Zuroff argues that Asner, who has Croatian and Austrian passports, should be deported because he obtained Austrian citizenship "under false pretences" by not declaring he was wanted for war crimes.

"The only hope we have here is that his Austrian citizenship gets canceled," Zuroff said.

Zuroff also said not enough was being done to find war crimes suspects or inform the public of who these suspects are.

"There are too many people in this country who want these problems to disappear. This is the problem, and this is why we came here to press the case because if we didn't press the case nothing would happen."

He criticized the way investigations were handled. "Apparently the modus operandi is not to look very hard for evidence and then to speak to the suspect and ask him: 'Well, are you guilty?"' he said.

[dfwgator]

Austria's legal system and its insufficient zeal in investigating alleged crimes committed under Hitler's Third Reich make it a "paradise for Nazi war criminals,"

Including a certain ex-UN Secretary General.

[Lion in Winter]

And thousands of Serbian Orthodox Christians were deported as well....

Weren't they Joan?

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel.

..................

[SJackson]

Communists can kill hundreds of millions and still get a pass from most people, including Jews. All people care about prosecuting is the Nazis. I have always thought it strange, but then the would is an exceedingly strange place.

That's not a function of "the world", but the countries they committed their crimes in. For example, in this case Croatia is attempting to prosecute a Nazi. There's nothing preventing Russia, for example, from prosecuting former Communists. Or from requesting their deportation if they've fled the country. It simply doesn't happen very often.

[VOA]

In a few years, the hunt will end as all those who escaped will be dead.

Not really.
There looks to be plenty of Today's New Nazis in Iran to be
tracked down and dealt justice.

[jmcenanly]

It was Kurt Waldheim. Not only was he the PM of Austria, he was secretary General of the U.N. as well

There may have been a hard liner more recently, but Waldheim wore the uniform

[JMS]

And yet not as bad as Kofi.

[HostileTerritory]

All people care about prosecuting is the Nazis.

Some Communists have been put on trial, particularly in East Germany, but the problem is that you have thousands or millions of people culpable in the crimes and it tears a society apart. Justice can't happen when so many people are tainted. I think 1 in 6 East Germans informed for the Stasi.

The lesson you should take away from the Nazi prosecutions is not "everyone wants to hunt them down", but that it's 60+ years after the war and there are still plenty of criminals out there who never faced justice and never will. There were few trials immediately after the war, only the big leaders, because many Germans were tied in with the regime and the countries had to move on with the people they had as citizens. people who had once been Nazis and now democrats. So everyone agreed to ignore the past for decades, not talking about the Holocaust or war crimes.

War crimes trials came much later, first with Eichmann in 1961, and only moreso in the 1970s when a generation of adults had grown up in Germany free of the Nazi taint and willing to look at past crimes.

[AnalogReigns]

One thing that gives me great peace of mind as a Christian is the specific New Testament (and implied Old Testament) teaching of judgement...for every single human being. Every country has its serious injustices...murderers who get away with it....rapists never caught...or sometimes, whole races who rise up and commit genocide (or democide, actualy the proper general term for the purposeful killing of entire populations civilians.) No matter how dilligent and competant a justice system is...some will get away with it--and on the world stage, that means thousands who've murdered innocents, go free and prosper. A terrible miscarriage of justice, for sure, however, when all is said and done, its a great comfort to know there is a Judge, who will set things right.

America's (and the UK's) system of innnocent until proven guilty foundational principle is based on that premise...that we should do all we can to punish wrong doers, but must assume innocence, as it is worse to punish an innocent man than to miss punishing a guilty one....because, even after we mess up....justice will prevail in the universe.

The most concentrated killing ever recorded though was in our lifetime....not long ago. In 1994 between April and June, up to ONE MILLION of the Tutsi tribe were slaughtered (literally, mostly by machete) by the majority Hutu tribe in Rwanda. That's nearly 300,000 a month. Even the Nazis were never so "efficient"... and the UN (and Bill Clinton) did not try to stop it. More that 10% of the country was hacked to death.

There are probably over 100,000 perpetrators of the Rwandan butchery....and most of these will never see punishment--to even try to prosecute all would be impossible practically and yes, it would destroy those who remain in that country. Prosecutors have sought out the ringleaders of the butchers...but that's the best they can do.

Yet the untold story is the amount of reconciliation that has occured....not led by UN peacekeepers, but by the churches of that land. Repentent murderers worship side by side now with those whose families they wiped out. It's almost beyond understanding how such healing can occur. I'm not saying its good policy to let repentent murderers off the hook--but with a situation like Rwanda, the numbers of people involved were so vast...it would take another genocide to punish them--something no one wants to occur. That God will hold people to account...and that the blood of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit can forgive and even turn murderers into godly persons is truly incredible.

[xJones]

That God will hold people to account...and that the blood of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit can forgive and even turn murderers into godly persons is truly incredible.

Beautifully said, thanks.

[monday]

"There's nothing preventing Russia, for example, from prosecuting former Communists. Or from requesting their deportation if they've fled the country. It simply doesn't happen very often.."

Why not? Why do murderers get a pass if they are communist murderers? Why do people tolerate Communist parties while vilifying, ostracizing and even making Nazi parties illegal in most European countries? Why aren't Communist parties illegal?

Communists have killed far more people than Nazi's. Communism is the number one ideological killer of the twentieth century, yet hardly anyone seems to care that there are still Communists everywhere you look.

[monday]

"Some Communists have been put on trial, particularly in East Germany, but the problem is that you have thousands or millions of people culpable in the crimes and it tears a society apart. Justice can't happen when so many people are tainted. I think 1 in 6 East Germans informed for the Stasi."

Exactly the same situation as Nazi Germany. I think Nazi's should be prosecuted, but so should Communists. They have killed millions more people than Nazi's.

How do you explain that while Nazi parties are reviled virtually everywhere and are illegal in most European countries, Communist parties, far from being reviled or illegal, are considered legitimate political parties in much of the world? Where is the justice? Societies who fail to learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

I don't care if it "tears society apart". A society that tolerates Communists deserves to die!

[HostileTerritory]

It is very difficult to reconcile democracy with justice for the crime committed by groups in the past. You can't argue away this contradiction; if people have the right to vote, they have the right to vote for groups that in the past committed terrible acts. It's especially difficult when the current groups do NOT intend to commit mass murder, but are guilty only of softpedaling past crimes and wanting to enact policies that fall far short of what their predecessors did.

If you ban a party that calls itself Communist, its members will regroup and call themselves Democratic Socialists, and present themselves to the voters. Nazis were banned after World War II, so their followers created Populist Parties or Nationalist Parties which did not say "we're going to kill all the Jews" (since that problem was "solved" anyway) but did put forth nationalist, anti-capitalist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. You can't keep human nature down. It's just not that easy.

Where would you even find trained judges in post-war Germany to try Nazis, when every judge has been a Nazi? A very high percentage of judges, years after the war, had been party members. Being trained in the law in the 1930s and 1940s meant being entwined with the Nazi state. These obstacles are real and enormous.

[AlexW]

"Why aren't Communist parties illegal?"

Thats a good question.

The problem is that today's American Democrats and European Socialist are not much different then the Communist.
They could be coming to a neighborhood near you.
There are plenty, like Cindy, the media whore, that love Castro, Jackson, and Chavez.

[monday]

"You can't argue away this contradiction; if people have the right to vote, they have the right to vote for groups that in the past committed terrible acts. It's especially difficult when the current groups do NOT intend to commit mass murder, but are guilty only of softpedaling past crimes and wanting to enact policies that fall far short of what their predecessors did."

Nazi parties are illegal in most European countries. Europeans therefore have NO RIGHT to vote for Nazi's. The reason for this is that Nazi ideology is incompatible with democracy. That is to say, people could vote the Nazi party into power once, but only once. Democracy would end the moment Nazi's assumed power.

The same is true of Communism. Look at what has happened to Venezuela. Chavez will never allow another election that has not been throughly rigged to allow him to stay in power.

This is the MO of Fascists and Communists the world over and why all Fascist and Communist parties should be outlawed.

Let them call themselves anything they want but if they walk like a duck and talk like a duck, ban them. Use the lessons we have learned about the socialistic tendencies of both Fascism and Communism to repudiate anyone who advocates socialism.

We know for instance that both Hitler and Stalin prohibited the private ownership of guns. They both nationalized important industries, directly in Stalins case, indirectly in Hitlers. Both banned opposition parties, Hitler banned smoking, Stalin banned practically everything.

Incidentally, the government Iraqi's have voted into office will very probably be the first and last Democratically elected government in Iraq. The reason.... Islam is incompatible with Democracy also and the newly elected Iraqi government is throughly Islamic.

Any ideology that allows or encourages one to kill or enslave those with opposing ideologies is incompatible with Democracy.

It's a simple lesson but one society seems slow in learning.

[sheik yerbouty]

There are two lies about WW2. The first is that Hitler was a German. The second one is that Austria was an occupied country
Kurt Waldheim was PM in Austria, and if I remember right, he was in the SS. Publically he basically shrieked "Lies! All lies! I was in law school in Vienna!" They had to add a new disease to psychiatric jounals: Waldheimer's Disease; "I was a nazi, but I forgot!"

[muawiyah]

Kurt was the only second lieutenant in any army involved in WWII who was NEVER PROMOTED.

Was that just his "cover", or was he doing something that kept him off the Eastern Front?

The mysteries about the guy are enormous.