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Lecture

Philip Rubenstein
Occupation: Nazi Hunter

Wednesday 24.03.2021

Summary

An incredible conversation with Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, who discusses his tireless efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice and the challenges in prosecuting them, as well as the journey he took through Lithuania and Belarus to uncover hidden Holocaust history.

Philip Rubenstein

an image of Philip Rubenstein

Philip Rubenstein was director of the Parliamentary War Crimes Group, which, in the mid-to-late 1980s, campaigned to bring Nazi war criminals living in the UK to justice. Philip was also the founder-director of the Holocaust Educational Trust and played a role in getting the study of the Shoah onto the national school’s curriculum in the UK. These days, he works with family businesses, advising on governance and continuity from one generation to the next.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff

an image of Efraim Zuroff

Holocaust historian Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and the director of the Centre’s Israel Office and Eastern European Affairs. He has played a major role in facilitating the prosecution of many Nazi war criminals all over the world. He is author of four books (translated into 15 languages) and numerous articles on Holocaust-related issues and their impact on the Jewish world.

This is a Nazi war criminal who’d been living in Telford in Shropshire for many, many years. He was involved in murders in Slonim in Belarus… he was never prosecuted, even though there was a huge weight of evidence because he was protected by the security services who he worked for.

No, and the reason is the following. South Africa was hermetically closed to immigration after World War 22, all immigration. So if not for that, you would’ve had plenty of survivors in South Africa and plenty of Nazi war criminals. Everywhere that the survivors went, the Nazis went, and they ended up living almost many of them in the same cities, usually in America, in the eastern seaboard, in UK in the big cities, London, other places. And the same in Australia, and the same in Canada, Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, et cetera. And when they got older, they moved to Florida. Both of them moved to Florida, survivors moved to Florida, and the Nazis moved to Florida.