ByJERUSALEM POST STAFF

The Wiesenthal Center annual report released on Wednesday has highlighted some successes in the past year in prosecuting Nazi war criminals around the world.

According to the results of the past year, six indictments were filed in Germany, along with three trials conducted (two in Germany and one in the United States). The two trials in Germany were of men who served as SS guards at the Stutthof concentration camp, near Gdansk, Poland, the first Nazi concentration camp established outside Nazi Germany on September 2, 1939. 25,053 Jews from the Baltics, largely the remnants of Lithuanian ghettos, were sent to the camp, as well as 23,566 who had previously been deported from Hungary to Auschwitz.

The first trial is that of Johannes Rehbogen, who served as a camp guard from June 1942 to September 1944, and Bruno Dey, served as an armed SS watchtower guard at Stutthof from August 1944 until April 1945.

In Memphis, Tennessee, a trial is being held for Friedrich Karl Berger, who served as an armed guard at Meppen, an affiliate camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. A total of 42,900 were killed at the camp, including those who were murdered in the camps, and 16,100 in the death marches. Berger was found guilty by the Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section of the US Justice Department, and deported to Germany in February 2020.

Likewise, one Nazi war criminal's Canadian citizenship was revoked due to his service in Einsatzgruppe D was confirmed.

Another finding was a 100% rise in investigations over the past year, with some 500 new investigations being conducted by the Polish Institute of National Memory. As of January 2021, 115 investigations are still ongoing.

In Russia, the government has initiated two Nazi war crimes investigations, marking a major step by Russian authorities since the collapse of the Soviet Union.