Operation last chance

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, Operation Last Chance delivers the important and moving story of one man’s heroic efforts to honor the victims of the Holocaust.

ISBN-13: 9780230617308
Author : Efraim Zuroff
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date: 11/10/2009

Editorial Reviews - Kirkus Reviews

A grim tale of one man's dedication to a legal and moral cause and a shocking expose of the widespread indifference and even antagonism that he has encountered. Historian Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, describes himself as "one-third detective, one-third historian and one-third political lobbyist, all of which combine to constitute a twenty-first-century Nazi hunter." A scholar of the Holocaust, he began doing research for the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which had been set up in 1979 to take legal action against Nazi war criminals living in America. During his time with the OSI, Zuroff learned of the major role played by collaborators in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Belarus and Croatia, many of whom had escaped notice when they fled to the United States, Canada, Australia and Britain. Zuroff, who later joined the Wiesenthal Center, details his determined and often futile efforts to convince the governments in what he refers to as "Anglo-Saxon democracies" to prosecute Nazi war criminals.

He reports that political will was lacking and legal actions were minimal. Political changes in eastern Europe following the breakup of the Soviet Union then led him to turn his attention to this region with the additional aims of fighting local anti-Semitism and promoting the accuracy of Holocaust accounts. The indifference he had met earlier was now combined with open antagonism, including death threats. With the financial aid of an American, Aryeh Rubin, in 2002 Zuroff launched Operation Last Chance, a campaign that offered rewards of $10,000 to anyone supplying information leading to the conviction and punishment of a Holocaustperpetrator.

Acknowledging that time is no longer on his side, the author describes his dogged pursuit of those whose names the campaign has brought to his attention. That Zuroff continues his efforts is a tribute to his determination to ensure that "the Holocaust will neither be forgotten, nor ignored, nor denied, nor distorted and that the historical record of its crimes that we leave to future generations will be as accurate as humanely possible."A sobering, valuable resource for future historians.

Meet the Author

Dr. Efraim Zuroff is a historian who specializes in Holocaust history and established and directs the Israel Office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and coordinates the Center's worldwide research on Nazi war criminals. Operation Last Chance (www.operationlastchance.org) which he launched together with Aryeh Rubin and the Targum Shlishi Foundation (www.targumshlishi.org) has been active in fourteen countries on three continents. He lives with his family in Efrat, Israel.