Jerusalem-The Simon Wiesenthal Center today welcomed the announcement late last week by prosecutors in Kassel, Germany that they had initiated an investigation into the possible role played by a member of Einsatzgruppe C in the mass murders carried out by that unit on September 29-30th 1941 at Babi Yar, the mass murder site of the Jews of Kiev.
In a statement issued here today by its chief Nazi-hunter Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center praised the decision in this case, which directly resulted from a list of Einsatzgruppen members submitted by the Center to the German ministers of Justice (Heiko Maas) and Interior (Thomas de Maziere) on September 1, 2014.
According to Zuroff:
"It is particularly satisfying that the Center's research has led to the discovery alive of two members of Einsatzgruppe C, the unit that murdered tens of thousands of Jews in Kamenetz-Podolsk, Zhitomir, and Kiev (Babi Yar). It is incumbent upon the German judicial authorities to expedite these cases as quickly as possible so that those who served in a unit that murdered so many innocent men, women, and children can still be held accountable for their crimes. We anxiously await a similar decision in the case of the second person we discovered who served in the unit, who currently lives near Osnabruck, Germany."
For additional information please contact the Israel Office of the Wiesenthal Center:Tel: 972-2-563-1274 or Tel: 972-50-721-4156, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal @EZuroff for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).