Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MASS KILLER I’m the only Jew who prays every day for the good health of Nazis... it’s a race against time to bring them to justice THE SATURDAY BIG READ
before the rest of the world had fully grasped what the Holocaust meant.
By 1947 he was working independently, obsessed with Eichmann, whom he tracked relentlessly.
Wiesenthal claimed to have found Eichmann’s hiding place in Argentina several years before Israeli intelligence captured him in 1960.
The arch-nazi’s trial the following year was famously televised and brought Wiesenthal fame, fuelling his Nazi-hunting career which he eventually ran from a centre in Vienna.
Despite neo-nazi death threats he was never deterred. Before he died in 2005 he had received plaudits from around the world, a Nobel Prize nomination and an honorary knighthood.
Israel-based Efraim, 71, met him many times to discuss their joint vocation – although they were a far cry from Pacino’s vengeful gang in Hunters.
He says: “Simon’s work is an inspiration, no question. I’m his successor. I feel that on my shoulders.
“We are carrying on his work in the way he wanted – not to go out and assassinate Nazis but to try and bring these people to justice and turn those trials into history and morality lessons for a world that needs to be reminded.
“He was dead set against revenge and taught me it does not solve the problem. I also learnt perseverance.
“But most important was the obligation we owe to the victims. That came up time and again. It’s a powerful point.” Efraim’s parents, originally from Lithuania, lost family in the Holocaust and he is named after his great-uncle who died at Nazi hands.
A trained historian, he began work with the Wiesenthal Center as a researcher. When the centre opened in 1977 – the year in which Hunters is set – it wasn’t focussed on Nazi hunting.
However, as it emerged thousands of ex-nazis were still at large, the US Justice Department approached him to work with them.
That’s where his Nazi hunting began. In 1986 came a “eureka” moment when he realised refugee records in Israel contained the names of many Nazis who had posed as displaced persons.
His knowledge of Nazis meant he had names. All he had to do was cross-check these with Red Cross records to find where they had emigrated to and now lived.
He went back to the Wiesenthal Center with a mission not only to hunt Nazis but also to convince the countries they were hiding in to prosecute.
He says: “I became the chief Nazi hunter and have been ever since. We had to swamp them with suspects so they couldn’t walk away from it.”
In time, laws to allow prosecutions were passed – Efraim sees them as “scalps”.
In the UK that landmark came in 1991, although only one Nazi has since been prosecuted here, despite Efraim giving Britain a list of 17 suspects.
He says: “We knew it was the tip of the iceberg but none were prosecuted. None is still alive as far as I know.”
Some survivors are unwilling to give