The Latvian is now an Australian citizen and lives in Melbourne.
He will never be prosecuted, though Australian authorities have a great deal of evidence against him. The evidence is that the Latvian joined the German Arajas Kommando squad; that he trained and commanded 100 men who were sent to Minsk to round up and murder Jews. From the middle of 1942 to mid-1943 he took part in the murder of at least 10,000 Jews, who were buried in mass graves outside Minsk.
He now looks like any other other old just another elderly man walking the suburban streets of Melbourne.
Bob Greenwood, QC, who headed the now disbanded special investigations unit on war crimes, said last week that it was a disgrace.
Why have these things taken so long to come to light? And why did they stay uncovered in Australia for so long?
They never would have been uncovered but for the work of journalist and author Mark Aarons.
Forty years after World War II, Aarons uncovered the chilling facts of apathy and complicity by Australian authorities in his book Sanctuary: Nazi Fugitives in Australia and an ABC documentary.
Nazi war criminals arrived in Australia in the first ships in the displaced-persons program in 1947 and 1948. Most are now Australian citizens.
More came in during the great European immigration waves when Arthur Calwell said Australia must populate or perish.
There is some irony in that. The populate-or-perish paranoia was generated by the closeness that Japan came to conquering Australia. The Allies dealt with Japanese war criminals fairly comprehensively: 5700 were prosecuted for crimes against humanity and 920 executed. Of them, 924 were prosecuted by Australian authorities under the 1945 war-crimes legislation (now repealed) and 148 executed.
But However, the populate-or-perish fear caused by Japanese militarism indirectly allowed safe haven for some of the perpetrators of German militarism. The ex-Nazis came in under cover of a huge immigration wave. Calwell did not want any nonsense about Nazis to get in the way of his grand plan to populate Australia.
Moreover, Calwell was so determined to placate concerns in Australia about white Australia that he ensured that the first batches of non-English-speaking migrants were tall, white, blond and blue-eyed a very Germanic lot, amongst whom the sort of men chosen as SS officers would not stand out.
Of course, no Japanese could find their his way to Australia that way.
Some Japanese war criminals escaped justice because they were seen to be useful to MacArthur’s occupying forces, but they could not escape through immigration. Nor did they have another shield that was available to German war criminals: usefulness in the fight against communism, which had taken eastern Europe, including a chunk of Germany itself.
Stalin’s takeover of eastern Europe did a great deal to shelter Nazi war criminals. Nazis were fanatical anti-communists. Allied fear of communism virtually from the day the war in Europe stopped overrode a desire to rigidly pursue war criminals. Further, many of Nazism’s worst atrocities were committed in the nations taken by Stalin, including, of course, East Germany, and many of the Nazis meticulously carefully-kept records of their own atrocities were located kept in the East and were taken by the communists, much to the relief of Nazis in the Western-occupied sectors, some of whom quietly boarded migrant ships to Australia and started a new life, hoping to put their atrocities behind them.
There are some unsubstantiated allegations that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation used the ex-Nazis in their its obsessive anti-communism drive and hence the reluctance by Australian authorities to pursue them in case any embarrassing sheltering was uncovered.
By 1986, when Aarons published, the ex-Nazis were old men old men, but criminals who had escaped justice none the less.
The Aarons allegations caused the appointment of Andrew Menzies from the Attorney-General’s Department to head a special investigation. He concluded that there were at least 250 Nazi war criminals in Australia, but cleared ASIO of any role in helping them enter Australia, but there was evidence that, once here, some ex-Nazis contacted ASIO. He found serious weaknesses in Australia’s post-war immigration vetting.
He passed the names to Bob Greenwood, who headed a special investigation unit. In 1988 the new War Crimes Act was passed and came into force at the beginning of 1989. It allows for the prosecution of alleged war criminals in Australian criminal courts using Australian rules of evidence and procedure, including juries.
That was before the collapse of the Soviet empire.
Aarons’s comprehensive and convincing work had demanded action. The Government could not do nothing. Andrew Menzies built on that, making it even more imperative that something be done.
However, the Australian Government and Parliament was in a bind. Australia had large ethnic communities from eastern European countries who had a well-justified fear of the then communist “”justice” systems. There was a real possibility that innocent Australians could be extradited and executed either cases of mistaken identity or cases deliberately trumped up by east European governments to snare political dissidents or critics. Requests for extradition in the 1950s (a very anti-communist time) had been refused on these grounds. They came from several eastern European countries.
But However, the matters uncovered by Aarons and Menzies could not be left without action. War criminals, now Australian citizens, could not be left to walk the streets. Nor could they be tried under the 1945 legislation that dealt with the problem immediately after the war. That provided military tribunals, which were unacceptable.
And so the 1988 Act was passed. It provided a method that would bring to account those proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but prevent punishment by prejudice of the innocent. It provided for trial in Australia using Australian rules of procedure and evidence. The crimes had to be serious (and indeed investigation and prosecution has almost exclusively been restricted to murder). Trials were generally to be in the Supreme Courts of the state or territory where the accused citizen or resident resided.
Even so, the proposal for war-crimes legislation created a great deal of heat. Commentators from the right thought it would stir old hatreds and vendettas and that unreliable evidence from official sources in communist countries would be used to mount trumped up charges against Australian citizens.
The targets were not Germans. They were Latvians, Ukrainians and Croatians who sided with the Nazis. The whole issue got enmeshed with irrelevancies: Whitlam’s recognition of the Soviet assimilation of the Baltic republics; east European communist tyranny; persecution of people who stood against communism, and so on.
The fundamental issue for a time got clouded: humans who perpetrate murder, genocide and crimes against humanity should be accountable and punished. Eventually, the Parliament agreed that this fundamental must transcend the circumstances of the moment the chaos of war, the excuse of following orders and the excuse that others were doing it, too. Parliament agreed that the fundamental must transcend the circumstances of the present: that the accused are old men, that evidence is difficult and costly to obtain and that the whole trial process would be expensive.
However, now the Australian Government seems to have stymied that. It won’t will not provide the extra money needed to finish the investigations.
Bob Greenwood that said this last week, “”I cannot come to grips with Parliament saying one thing and the Government doing another by trimming the costs as much as they could.
“”The investigation unit was closed prematurely [in June last year]. There were still outstanding inquiries that could have been made. I have an uneasy feeling that there were other cases there that were not properly pursued.”
Greenwood resigned as head of the unit in April 1991, though he was consultant through the rest of 1991. When the investigation unit closed it was changed to War Crimes Prosecution Support Unit for the two outstanding cases now being tried. Staff has be cut from more than 50 to about 20, and the whole thing will end finish at the end of the year when the trials are likely to conclude.
“”The Government pulled the rug out,” Mr Greenwood said. “”It used the excuse that I had said June 20, 1992, should see it wrapped up, but when I made that prophecy I could not foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting chaos that prevented us investigating fully.”
The case of the Latvian in Melbourne appals Mr Greenwood.
The Director of Public Prosecutions had sought independent advice in the case. The advice was there was a good chance to get a conviction, but some extra evidence was needed.
It was only a matter of a team of three going to Europe to tidy up loose ends and get a few witnesses.
“”He could have stood trial for thousands of deaths,” Greenwood said.
Aarons has interviewed witnesses to the murders. A witness said the now Melbourne resident and Australian citizen “”executed peaceful Soviet citizens. He was armed with a sub-machinegun[TH].[TH].[TH]. He would personally appoint some eight to 15 men from among his subordinates to take part in shootings[TH].[TH].[TH]. he would receive a list of civilians to be shot from his superiors. The victims would be taken by lorry from their cells in the building of the Minsk security police to a young pine wood, placed on the edge of a pit that was already dug, and shot down. Pits were dug by Jewish prisoners, who also back-filled the pits after the shootings.”
The shootings went on for at least a year, usually daily, but at least once a week.
Greenwood said that when the investigation against this man was stopped, “”It left me with a nasty taste in my mouth. The Government was hypocritical.”
He agrees that “”there is a time when you say there is a price for justice beyond which it is not acceptable to go”. However, the legislation was put in place by the Parliament and the Government had a responsibility to investigate.
“”If it thought it too costly, it should have gone back to Parliament for it to be done in the democratic way,” he said.
The bureaucrats tried to keep the lid on the costs.
“”We are talking multiple murder,” he said. “”No-one would blink at the costs if they were Australians who were slaughtered.”
At one stage the costs of the Winchester investigation had outstripped war crimes spending. The Winchester investigation was an important one, but so were the war-crimes investigations.
“”We’re talking half an F111 or something.”
In fact the total spent on war-crimes investigation since 1987 has been $22.6 million: $19.2 million by the special investigations unit; $2.2 million by the DPP and $1.2 million in legal aid to the accused.
Compared with costs in other cases, Greenwood argues it is not a great deal, especially considering the seriousness of the offences.
“”District Court fraud cases involving $100,000 can go for six months, running up huge costs,” he said.
He said the momentum to prosecute World War II criminals had begun because of Mark Aarons’s work and a then sympathetic group of ministers were anxious to do something about it, especially Bob Hawke and Bill Hayden. The then Attorney-General, Lionel Bowen, was a very pragmatic man, and there were na lot of practical hurdles.
“”But after seeing the allegations Bowen’s fundamental honesty and decency overtook him, and he always provided the support,” Greenwood said. After Bowen he did not get the same support.
Greenwood says there is a real chance eastern European countries will start seeking extraditions. of Australian citizens that Australian authorities won’t will not deal with.
He is sure they would get a fair trial now and would not be executed the two blocks against earlier requests for extradition.
“”The Procurator-General of Ukraine was out here recently,” Greenwood said. “”I had discussions with him. I am quite sure they would get a fair trial and there would be no question of execution.”
Greenwood wants to see war-crimes legislation for all conflicts. He fears that there are probably Cambodians in Australia, possibly now citizens, who had taken part in the Pol Pot horrors. Similarly, for former Yugoslavia.
The closing of the book on war crimes in Australia is a shameful episode, especially in the light of at least one prosecutable case.
The book should be re-opened. Australia in 1993, with its affluence, ability to investigate and ability to provide fair trials should be able to send a message to the world and the people engaged in its armed conflicts: there is no haven here for war criminals. No matter where the crimes took place, no matter how long ago, no matter the difficulty and cost, no matter how old the perpetrators, war crimes will be prosecuted and punished.
And the legislation should be extended to all armed conflicts. It is morally repugnant that people now Australian citizens can walk free after taking part in Pol Pot’s horrors or “ethnic cleansing” by rape, murder and expulsion in former Yugoslavia.