Behind the Headlines Going After War Criminals

An effort by a group of 50 British Parliamentarians to put the issue of war criminals living in the United Kingdom on the government’s agenda has gained substantial ground in recent months.

The All Party Parliamentary War Crimes Group (APPWCG) crystallized last November shortly after the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles furnished the British government with a list of 17 alleged Nazi war criminals thought to be living in the UK.

Britain is the only one of the four English-speaking World War II Allied nations which has not set up some form of commission of inquiry into fugitive war criminals who found refuge within its borders. Canada, the U.S. and Australia have all within the past decade established some kind of inquiry. But Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her government have not responded to the demands for a similar effort.

PARLIAMENTARIANS DECIDE TO ACT

When the government failed to respond to the list of 17, a group of Parliamentarians decided to form the voluntary, non-partisan and independent organization to lobby the government for prosecution and deportation of war criminals and related war crimes issues.

Labor MPs Merlyn Reese, and Greville Jenner, one of the strongest Jewish activists in Parliament, head the war crimes group.

Philip Rubenstein, the group’s secretary and only staff member who is not a member of Parliament, recently visited New York on a fact-finding visit to the U.S. and Canada. Rubenstein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that one of the group’s most substantial achievements to date was persuading the government to change its position regarding the opening of the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) archive to wider access.

The Israel UN Mission requested that UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar make the files — now available only to UN member governments — publicly accessible. Perez de Cuellar in turn called on the 17 governments that composed the original War Crimes Commission, including Britain, to vote on Israel’s request. Although originally only one government supported Israel’s petition, most have since changed their position.

The British government now supports less restricted access, which would include bona fide researchers as well as UN member-governments, Rubinstein said. “We are raising the issue constantly, ” he said.

For about two months, the group concentrated on eliciting some kind of statement from the British government on the war criminals list. The feeling was that the government should take responsibility for investigating and bringing action against those listed.

The group has sought the establishment of a government agency parallel to the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which investigates and prosecutes suspected war criminals living in the U.S.

After months of little movement, a breakthrough came in January 1987 when Scottish Television aired a half-hour program on a man named Antanas Gecas who lived at the time in Edinburgh, Scotland. Gecas, inter alia, admitted on camera that he had protected Nazis who were killing Jews when he was the commander of a wartime Lithuanian police battalion,

Gecas was part of a “mobile killing unit,” according to Eli Rosenbaum, a Washington attorney and former prosecutor for the Office of Special Investigations. Between 1942 and 1943, Gecas’ unit “went on a rampage through Byelorussia, from town to town, shtetl to shtetl, wiping out every Jewish man, woman and child they could lay their hands on.” Rosenbaum said. Thousands were murdered in this onslaught, he said,

Scottish. Television interviewed comrades of Gecas while gathering evidence for the documentary in the Soviet Union. The witnesses said Gecas had personally ordered hangings and was involved in mass murders. The documentary, titled “Britain: A Nazi Safehouse,” raised interest in the war crimes issues despite receiving little advance publicity and being aired at 11:30 p.m., when relatively few people watch. The producers had difficulty finding a network that would air the show.

Despite the difficulties, the program had some impact, Rubenstein said. Finally, in late February, the APPWCG met with Home Office Secretary Douglas Hurd. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher charged the Home Office, which handles immigration and naturalization matters, with the responsibility for the war criminals list.

POSSIBILITIES FOR LEGAL ACTION

Hurd outlined a pessimistic list of possibilities for legal action against the war criminals, Rubenstein said. Hurd also informed the group that the Home Office had found that six of the people on the Wiesenthal list were alive and residing in the UK. “There was an explosion in the press front-page articles — radio and TV.” Rubinstein said. A week later in March, Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center met with Hurd in London.

“The Home Office had been forced to change their tune” as a result of the heavy press coverage, Rubenstein said. The government indicated that the Gecas case had produced strong enough evidence to merit action.

Hurd told Cooper and Hier that the only thing they would rule out was extradition or deportation to the Soviet Union. The British would, however, consider extradition to Israel and West Germany. The Home Office favored denaturalization and deportation for war criminals, Rubenstein said.

Thatcher preferred to fall back on extradition rather than criminal prosecution. But this passive approach to the demands for action against war criminals will have little practical effect, Rosenbaum said. The United States has received only three extradition requests ever from countries with whom it has a treaty (excluding requests from the Soviet Union, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S. or Britain).

The Home Office pledged to gather immigration records and documentary evidence about the 17 people listed by the Wiesenthal Center. Any possible action would depend on the weight of the evidence presented. To date, the British government has taken no action against any suspected Nazi war criminals living in the UK. The British elections put the group’s activities on hold temporarily but in July they returned to their work for a month until the Parliament recessed for summer. In the meantime, Scottish Television aired on July 22 a follow-up documentary on the Gecas case. This time, the station held a press conference. The program ran an hour, received advance publicity and had a much greater impact on the public, Rubenstein said.

The Wiesenthal Center submitted evidence to the British government against Gecas (who was on its list of 17 suspected war criminals in the UK) which Scottish Television obtained in the Soviet Union and evidence on two others on the list. To date, the Home office has determined that nine of the 17 are alive in the UK

Scottish Television provided the APPWCG with a list of 34 additional suspected Nazi war criminals living in the UK which they obtained from the Soviet Embassy in London. The Home Office determined that at least seven of the 34 are alive in the UK. The Home Office, in a few short months, has determined that 16 suspected Nazi war criminals are living in the UK, most of them from Baltic states and the Ukraine.

The APPWCG has received an enormous amount of mail, according to Rubenstein, the great majority of it strongly in favor of their activities.

“The people are outraged that Nazis came into Britain,” Rubenstein said. “British are very proud that Britain was one of the few countries that withstood the Nazi occupation of Europe.”

The group has also received what Rubenstein called “standard hate mail” from neo-Nazis who claim that “(Menachem) Begin and (Ariel) Sharon are the real war criminals.”

England’s Jewish community of about 400,000 usually maintains a low profile, Rubenstein said. But the attention focussed on war crimes issues in recent months has received national attention that makes some in the community a bit nervous, he said.