SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) – A senior Jewish leader accused
Australian officials of being complicit in allowing Nazi war criminals
to seek sanctuary here.
Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council
of Australian Jewry, said Aug. 19 at the launch of a new book about Nazi
war criminals: “Australian governments, through commission and
omission, had been complicit in allowing torturers, murderers and
architects of the most gross inhumanity to come and live in peace and
without fear of consequences in Australia.”
His attack comes just days after Australia’s highest court
ruled that Karoly (Charles) Zentai, believed to be the last suspected
Nazi war criminal in Australia, could not be surrendered to Hungary to
face accusations of a war crime committed there in 1944.
Jones, who is also director of international and community
affairs for the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, scolded
the judges, saying their decision “almost screams from the rooftops that
Australia lacks the will to redress a great historic wrong.”
He said there has “been a fickle, cynical abrogation of
morality” by successive Australian governments. “There had been a gross
distortion of decency, allowing fugitives to take places of refugees,”
Jones said, adding the result was “a moral stain on our country.”
Launching “The Road to the Menzies Inquiry: Suspected War
Criminals in Australia” by the late Leslie Caplan, also a former
president of the ECAJ, Jones said: “There were hundreds of people who
came here and slept peacefully at night, without any concern that they
would ever be brought to account for their crimes.” 
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