Despite calls by the Australian Jewish community for a complete investigation, Australian authorities have announced that they will not pursue the case against an alleged Nazi war criminal recently deported here from the United States.
When Konrad Kalejs, 80, arrived here in mid-April, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry wrote to the Australian government arguing that “there is a compelling case” to “consider all remedies available” if grounds are found to prosecute Kalejs in this country.
But this week, the Australian Federal Police declared that his case will not be pursued.
After the dissolution last year of a special unit that had been established to prosecute alleged Nazi war criminals, the federal police became the only Australian institution with the authority to investigate such allegations.
In a brief statement issued in Canberra this week, the federal police announced that they had “made an assessment and took the decision not to mount an investigation.”
In 1988, Australian war crimes legislation was amended to allow trials of individuals living in Australia against whom there was evidence of involvement in crimes against humanity during the Nazi occupation of Europe.
But past federal police investigations into Nazi war criminals have been shelved due to inadequate resources.
Kalejs immigrated to Australia from Germany after World War II and became a naturalized Australian citizen in the 1950s.
He immigrated to the United States in 1959 and omitted any reference to his wartime membership in the Arajs Kommando, a mobile killing unit in Nazi-occupied Latvia.
Isi Leibler, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, described the decision not to pursue the case as “a bitter pill to swallow.
“This final episode of Australian government action concerning Nazi war criminals alleged to have enjoyed many years in free, democratic Australia, reinforces the fact that investigations should have taken place 40 years ago, when the outcome would have been decidedly different,” he said.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
