Jerusalem-A petition signed by 150 local lawyers calling upon the Israeli government to urge Germany to take legal action against convicted Nazi SS executioner Klaas Faber, who is currently residing unpunished for his crimes in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, was submitted late yesterday to the office of Israeli Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman. The petition, which was initiated and organized by Advocate David Schonberg, expressed the lawyers’ sense of outrage that Faber, who was sentenced to death in Holland for a string of murders he carried out in the service of the SS but who escaped to Germany in 1952, has been living unprosecuted and unpunished in Germany for decades, despite several requests from the Dutch government for his extradition to serve his sentence, which had been commuted in the late 40’s to life imprisonment. The petition was submitted in support of the ongoing efforts of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to bring Faber to justice, and to enlist the active support of the Israeli government in this case. It also calls for the Israeli government to urge Germany to cancel any existing laws, such as the infamous “Fuhrer befehl”, which granted German citizenship to local non-German Nazi collaborators and protected them from extradition to their countries of origin to face prosecution and/or punishment.

According to Advocate Schonberg: “The protection that German law accords this convicted war criminal, enabling him to live untroubled in Germany is an affront to law and human values, and by its belittling of the enormity of the holocaust’s crimes, provides a harmful message to modern society. We expect our government to take a more active role in the efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice and this is exactly the type of case where Israel’s involvement can prove of critical assistance”.

The Wiesenthal Center’s chief Nazi-hunter Dr. Efraim Zuroff welcomed the initiative and added that “Germany’s failure hereto to put Faber on trial or return him to Holland are a travesty which must be corrected as quickly as possible, while justice can still be achieved.” The petition also has the support of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust survivors and Yad Vashem.

For more information call 00-972-50-7214156 (Zuroff) or 02-624-2458 ( Schonberg)