The Simon Wiesenthal
Center and the Targum Shlishi Foundation have launched the second
stage of their “Operation: Last Chance” campaign which
offers financial rewards for information leading to the prosecution
and punishment of Nazi war criminals in the Baltics, by initiating
an innovative ad campaign which utilizes authentic Holocaust-era
photos of Nazi atrocities to urge informants to supply the Center
with incriminating information against local Holocaust perpetrators.
The ads, which have already appeared in Lithuania and are slated
to run in Latvia and Estonia during the coming two weeks, note
the tragic fates of the Baltic Jewish communities and the role-played
by local collaborators in their liquidation.
In Lithuania, for example, the ad noted, “Lithuanian Jewry
did not disappear. They were murdered in Ponar (Vilnius), Fort IX
(Kaunas), Kuziai Forest (Siauliai) and over a hundred other places
of mass murder…”In Latvia the ad, whose publication will
coincide with the anniversary of the large-scale annihilation of
30,000 Riga Jews (on November 30 and December 8, 1941), will focus
on that atrocity, the worst in Latvia’s history.
“
Our goal is not only to notify the public about “Operation:
Last Chance,” but to inform people about the critical role
played by local Nazi collaborators in each of the Baltic countries
(as well as in other countries) in the implementation of the Final
Solution. In that respect, while our immediate focus is on justice
and the prosecution of those responsible, our larger goal is education.
Although these countries have already been admitted to NATO, they
have a long way to go in confronting their World War II past and
the active participation of numerous Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians
in the crimes of the Holocaust, “ said Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the
Center’s chief Nazi-hunter and the coordinator of the project.
“
Operation: Last Chance is designed to arouse the conscience of these
societies and help them confront their pasts. It’s about justice
not revenge. And therein is an important message for today’s
terrorists from Al-Quaida, that the guilty will be hunted for decades,
if necessary,” said Targum Shlishi founder Aryeh Rubin.
For more information please contact: 972-50-721-4156
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