Efraim Zuroff

When the Simon Wiesenthal Center was founded in 1977, Dean Rabbi Marvin Hier promised Simon Wiesenthal that bringing Holocaust perpetrators to justice would be the number one priority. The famed Nazi hunter died in 2005, but there was no expiration date on that promise to him—nor should that be except for the death or incapacity of the last criminal.

Juxtapose these recent international stories, from the U.S. and Europe, involving war crimes and crimes against humanity ranging up to genocide committed from Auschwitz to Africa:

• Rwanda native Beatrice Munyenyezi, 43 years old, who lived in New Hampshire for fifteen years, is sentenced by U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe to 10 years in prison for securing U.S. citizenship by lying about her role as commander of one of the notorious roadblocks where Tutsis were murdered by Hutu militia in the early 1990s.

• Ukrainian immigrant Michael Karkoc, 94 years old, a Nazi collaborator enjoyed his retirement until the Associated Press revealed him living in Minneapolis.

• Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir remains the target of 2009-2010 arrest warrants, issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague indicting him for multiple counts of crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide in Darfur.

• Hungarian Laszlo Csatary, 98 years old, previously stripped of his Canadian citizenship and deported, finally is facing trial in his native country for helping to deport 15,700 Jews to Auschwitz from a ghetto in occupied Slovakia in 1944, while in Germany Hans Lipschis, 93 years old, a suspected guard at the Auschwitz, has been arrested. (more…)