German TV To Air Interviews With Nazi Death Squad Soldiers
Nazi Horror: Nazi soldiers force Jews from their homes in the Warsaw ghetto. Image by getty imaged
BERLIN (JTA) — A German television channel is broadcasting interviews with two alleged members of World War II Nazi death squads located with help from an Israeli hunter of Nazis.
Efraim Zuroff, Jerusalem-based Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, went public with the names after German state investigators appeared to be dragging their feet, he said in an interview.
The program by the ARB broadcaster featuring comments from Kurt Gosdek and Herbert Wahler was to air Thursday in ARD’s Kontakt magazine. They are alleged to be members of Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, which historians say were responsible for about two million murders in the Soviet lands under German occupation.
According to Zuroff, who in 2014 had supplied German investigators with a list of 80 names of Einsatzgruppen members born in 1920 or later, said he became frustrated with the lack of response from the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg. He decided to work with a reputable German broadcaster in the meantime.
The prosecution of such perpetrators became easier after the 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk in Munich, which set a precedent enabling accessories to Nazi genocide to be tried for murder.
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