Wiesenthal Center on Nazi prosecutions: U.S. gets an 'A', Germany a 'B'

Germany has over the past year significantly improved its efforts to bring to justice the world's last living Nazi war criminals, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said Tuesday.

But others, including Austria and several Eastern European and South American states, are still failing to do so, the organization said in its annual report evaluating countries for their efforts to track down, prosecute and try ex-Nazis residing within their borders.

Only the United States received an A, while Germany, Serbia and Spain were the only three countries to receive a B in the report.

Austria, Australia, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Sweden, Syria and Ukraine received an F because they refuse in principle to investigate and prosecute aging Nazis, whether for ideological or legal reasons such as statutes of limitations, according to the report.

The report noted the "ongoing and consistent success" of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations in finding, revoking the citizenship and subsequently deporting to their countries of departure former Nazis who have settled in the U.S. since the war.

The Wiesenthal Center, whose goal is to hunt down former Nazis, praised Germany for the March indictment in a Munich court of Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk, dubbed "Ivan the Terrible," over the mass murder of Jews at Poland's Sobibor Nazi death camp.

The center said it was "most disappointed" by Hungary's failure hereto to bring to justice Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian officer now in his 90s accused of carrying out the mass execution of hundreds of civilians in Novi Sad, Serbia in January 1942. He was tried and convicted but never served his punishment, although exposed by the Wiesenthal Center as living in Budapest in the summer of 2006.

The center also published its updated, top 10 list of most-wanted Nazi war criminals, headed by Demjanjuk and followed by Kepiro as number two.