German launches poster campaign to find surviving Nazi war criminals

PanARMENIAN.Net - A poster campaign has launched in Germany aimed at tracking down the last surviving Nazi war criminals and bringing them to justice, BBC News said.

Some 2,000 posters showing the entrance to the Nazi Auschwitz death camp and asking people to come forward with information have been displayed in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

The U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center offers rewards for useful information. It estimates there to be 60 people alive in Germany fit to stand trial.

Some are suspected of having served as guards at Nazi death camps or being members of death squads responsible for mass killings, particularly early on in the war.

"Unfortunately, very few people who committed the crimes had to pay for them," leading international Nazi hunter and the centre's Jerusalem branch director, Efraim Zuroff, said. "The passage of time in no way diminishes the crimes."

As part of its "Operation Last Chance II" project, the centre is offering rewards of up to 25,000 euros (£21,500; $33,080) for information which helps to prosecute war criminals in Germany.

The centre, which is one of the largest Jewish human rights organisations, is asking for tip-offs via a hotline it has set up.

The posters depict a black and white photo of the railway tracks leading into Auschwitz and say in German: "Late, but not too late. Millions of innocents were murdered by Nazi war criminals. Some of the perpetrators are free and alive. Help us take them to court."

Auschwitz, in occupied Poland, was the biggest Nazi death camp where more than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered.