When you’re the world’s last active Nazi hunter, retirement isn’t a concept to be taken lightly. Retirement means closing the door on justice, like God at the end of Yom Kippur. It’s knowing that all the justice that has been served for Holocaust crimes is all the justice that will ever be served.
More than the Nazis’ defeat in 1945, more than the death of the last survivor, one could argue that the retirement of the last Nazi hunter will signal the actual end of the Holocaust — when the dark years between 1933 and 1945 become the sole provenance of the historians.
It is for that reason that retirement is not something that Efraim Zuroff, who calls himself the last Nazi hunter (others may disagree), is even considering. At 63, when most folks his age are likely counting down the days until their pension kicks in, retirement is somewhat of a dirty word to Zuroff.
“It [will be] a sad day for me,” he says from his small office in central Jerusalem.
Yet, he may not have a choice. The world’s former Nazis, and the thousands of collaborators who facilitated the Shoah, will likely all be dead within the next 15 years, if not sooner. Still, he says, there is no giving up.
Read Full Article »