Nazi Hunt: Elusive Justice

Pictured: Nazi war criminal Kurt Lishka, photographed in Cologne, Germany, in 1971.

Credit: Courtesy of Harry Dreifuss

Investigate the 65-year effort to identify, prosecute and punish the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust. 

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Allies declared the Nazi party a criminal organization and pledged to prosecute and punish all those who took part in genocide and crimes against humanity. During the Nuremberg Trials, approximately 1,000 Nazi officials were convicted of crimes against humanity; but hundreds of thousands of suspected war criminals evaded prosecution -- by returning to the societies they’d helped destroy; by concealing their war records, by assuming false identities; by fleeing Europe; or by serving the Allies as spies and scientists. Thousands of Nazi criminals are presumed to be alive.

Nazi Hunt: Elusive Justice, airing Monday, November 12, 2012 at 7 p.m. on WXXI World (DT21.2/cable 524), explores why governments and institutions failed to prosecute and punish mass murderers, and why certain individuals chose to pursue fugitive killers on their own.

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