Operation Last Chance
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Operation Last Chance was launched July 2002 by the
Simon Wiesenthal Center The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance educat ...
with its mission statement being to track down ex-Nazis still in hiding. Most of them were nearing the end of their lifetimes, hence the operation's name.
Efraim Zuroff Efraim Zuroff ( he, אפרים זורוף; born August 5, 1948) is an American-born Israeli historian and Nazi hunter who has played a key role in bringing indicted Nazi and fascist war criminals to trial. Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiese ...
is director of the Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem who serves as the Israeli liaison as well as overseer of this project, the focus of which is an investigation, prosecution, and conviction of the last remaining Nazi war criminals and collaborators. Many have obtained citizenship in Canada and the United States under false pretenses; usually by misrepresentation, omission, or falsification of their criminal past, specifically, war crimes which rose to the level of crimes against humanity.


Prosecutions and convictions

Operation Last Chance assisted in the prosecution and interim conviction of
John Demjanjuk John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; uk, Іван Миколайович Дем'янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, ...
for his alleged role in the torture and murder of Jews in various concentration camps, among other atrocities. Demjanjuk became an American citizen in the 1950s. Demjanjuk had previously been exonerated of genocide and crimes against humanity by Israel's Supreme Court. Demjanjuk was later accused by Germany of being a Ukrainian collaborator (sometimes referred to by camp inmates as '' Askaris'') and camp guard at Sobibor. In May 2011, a Munich lower criminal court found Demjanjuk guilty of being an accessory to murder at
Sobibór extermination camp Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As a ...
, where about 250,000 Jews were murdered. Demjanjuk denied all accusations and appealed the verdict. Shortly after Demjanjuk's death in 2012, the German Appellate Court announced that, because Demjanjuk died before his appeal could be heard, Demjanjuk had no criminal record, that his previous interim conviction by a lower court was annulled, and that Demjanjuk was innocent. Following the Demjanjuk case, the Operation Last Chance team of investigators, attorneys, and German prosecutors began to focus on another Ukrainian national, a Nazi collaborator who had illegally sought and obtained refuge in the United States, John Kalymon. In 2007, as a result of prosecution by the Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice, a Federal District Court stripped John Kalymon of his United States citizenship for falsifying his background on his immigration documents and naturalization papers. The District Court judge found that Kalymon had been a member of the
Ukrainian auxiliary police The ''Ukrainische Hilfspolizei'' or the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police ( ua, Українська допоміжна поліція, Ukrains'ka dopomizhna politsiia) was the official title of the local police formation (a type of hilfspolizei) set up b ...
and assisted the Nazis in the persecution of the Jewish population confined in the
Lemberg ghetto Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...
until its liquidation in 1943. The Jewish population of Lemberg (Lwów, today Lviv, Ukraine) was the third largest Jewish community in Poland. In 2011, an immigration judge in Detroit found Kalymon removable for his misrepresentations, a finding affirmed on appeal. These courts affirmed the lower court's finding of fact, that during the course of his collaboration with the Germans, Kalymon had murdered at least one Jew and wounded at least one other while serving as a Ukrainian Policeman in the city. It was on this basis that his deportation was ordered. Like Demjanjuk, if the appellate process had been exhausted, Kalymon "may be deported to Germany, Ukraine, Poland or any other country that will accept him..." based on the ruling of U.S. Immigration Court Judge Elizabeth Hacker. In 2014, prosecutors in
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
, Germany filed an arrest warrant for Kalymon for being an accessory to war crimes. Legal complications prevented any interviews or an extradition. Kalymon died later that year in June, before he could ever be tried for the crimes.


"Operation Last Chance 2"

Formally Launched December, 2011 by
Efraim Zuroff Efraim Zuroff ( he, אפרים זורוף; born August 5, 1948) is an American-born Israeli historian and Nazi hunter who has played a key role in bringing indicted Nazi and fascist war criminals to trial. Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiese ...
, director of the Wiesenthal Centre in Israel, the project will be offering rewards. On January 15, 2008, the reward offered by the Wiesenthal Center for information leading to the arrest and conviction of former Nazis and Nazi collaborators was increased from $10,000 to $25,000. for clues to persons who worked in either the extermination camps or in the so-called "''Aktion'' Squads." The ''Aktion'' Squads, or '' Einsatzgruppen,'' were responsible for the murder of some 1.5 million
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
,
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, and Baltic ( Lithuania, Latvia,
Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...
) Jews as concentration camps like
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
, Auschwitz and the Operation Reinhardt Camps were being built and even at the same time they were utilized in the western areas of Nazi-occupied Poland and eastern General Government (GG) Galicia regions, respectively.


Ongoing investigations and prosecutions/Other Last Chance case files

Kalymon's deportation order came only days after another accused Nazi war criminal, Serbian collaborator Peter Egner, had died in Washington state before he could face a February 22 trial aimed at stripping him of his U.S. citizenship. He was accused by U.S. prosecutors of helping commit genocide by serving as a transport guard for mobile gas chambers and trains bound for the Auschwitz death camp. Previously Egner had admitted he belonged to a Nazi-run security unit but denied participation in war crimes. Since its inception, the U.S. Justice Department's Nazi War Crimes Unit ( Office of Special Investigations) has won cases against 107 people in the United States who were identified as participating in Nazi persecutions during World War II. Excluding Kalymon, there are eight similar cases still pending all of which are within the purview, scope and mission of Operation Last Chance.


References


External links

*{{official, http://www.operationlastchance.org/ Aftermath of the Holocaust The Holocaust and the United States