Argentina In March 1998,
Ustasha Dinko Šakić, the former commandant of
Jasenovac concentration camp (nicknamed the "Auschwitz of the Balkans"), was interviewed on national television in Argentina, where he had lived for over 50 years. During the interview, he admitted to his leadership position, but denied killing anyone. The interview caused a public uproar. In May 1998, Šakić was arrested by Argentine police. The following month, he was extradited to
Croatia. In 1999, a Zagreb court sentenced him to 20 years in prison for his crimes. Šakić died in prison in 2008.
Australia Latvia applied to Australia to extradite
Konrāds Kalējs, allegedly a senior officer in the pro-Nazi
Arajs Commando, but he died on 8 November 2001 before he could be extradited. Kalējs migrated to Australia in 1950 and took citizenship.
Hungary applied for the extradition of
Charles Zentai from Australia. He was accused of the murder of Peter Balazs, an 18-year-old
Jewish man, in
Budapest in November 1944, while serving in the
Hungarian Army. In 1987 the Australian government established the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) to investigate suspected Nazi war criminals living in Australia. From the unit's work, charges were made against
Ivan Polyukhovich, Heinrich Wagner and Mikolay Berezowsky. In 1990,
Ivan Polyukhovich was charged after SIU investigators (led by Australian archaeologist Richard Wright) uncovered and exhumed a mass grave of over 500 Jewish
execution victims in Serniki (Sernyky) Ukraine. The SIU was actively investigating Australian citizen and suspected war criminal
Karlis Ozols when the unit was closed in 1992 after three prosecutions, one trial and no convictions.
Belgium Belgium imprisoned Belgian nationals who had collaborated with the Nazis and executed some. One Belgian to be sentenced to execution was
Pierre Daye; however, he was one of the first Nazi collaborators to escape Europe, and unusually by plane. He fled to Argentina with the help of
Charles Lescat, also collaborator of
Je suis partout. Once in Argentina he attended a meeting organised by
Juan Perón in the
Casa Rosada during which a network (colloquially called
ratlines) was created, to organise the escape of collaborators and former Nazis. On 17 June 1947, Belgium requested his
extradition from Argentina; however, the Argentine Government ignored this request. Now secure in his freedom, Pierre Daye resumed his writing activities, becoming the editor of an official
Perónist review.
Henri de Man was one of the leading Belgian
socialist theoreticians of his period, who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. After the liberation of Belgium, he crossed the border to
Switzerland. He was convicted
in absentia of
treason after the war. He died on 20 June 1953, together with his wife, in a collision with a train in
Murten, Switzerland. Philippe Pétain, the former head of
Vichy France, was charged with treason in July 1945. He was convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad, but Charles de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
Pierre Laval was however, executed after his trial. Most convicted people were given amnesty a few years later. In the police, collaborators often resumed official responsibilities. For example, Maurice Papon, who would be convicted in the 1990s for his role in the Vichy collaborationist government, was in the position of giving orders for the
Paris massacre of 1961 as the head of the Parisian police. The French members of the Waffen-SS
Charlemagne Division who survived the war were regarded as traitors. Some of the more prominent officers were executed, while the rank-and-file were given prison terms; some of them were given the option of serving time in
Indochina (1946–54) with the
Foreign Legion instead of prison. Many war criminals were judged only in the 1980s, including
Paul Touvier,
Klaus Barbie, Maurice Papon and his deputy
Jean Leguay. The last two were both convicted for their roles in the July 1942 ''Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv'', or
Vel' d'Hiv Roundup. Famous
Nazi hunters
Serge and Beate Klarsfeld spent decades trying to bring them to justice. A fair number of collaborationists joined the
OAS terrorist movement during the
Algerian War (1954–62).
Jacques de Bernonville escaped to Quebec, then Brazil.
Jacques Ploncard d'Assac became a counselor of
Salazar in Portugal. Reliable statistics of the death toll do not exist. At the low end, one estimate is that approximately 10,500 were executed, before and after liberation. "The courts of Justice pronounced about 6,760 death sentences, 3,910 in absentia and 2,853 in the presence of the accused. Of these 2,853, 73 percent were commuted by de Gaulle, and 767 carried out. In addition, about 770 executions were ordered by the military tribunals. Thus the total number of people executed before and after the Liberation was approximately 10,500, including those killed in the épuration sauvage", notably including members and leaders of the
milices. US forces put the number of "summary executions" following liberation at 80,000. The French Minister of the Interior at the time, March 1945, reported that the number executed was 105,000. Modern scholarship estimates a total number of summary executions between 10,000 and 15,000.
Greece Greece was under the control of the Third Reich from 1941 to 1944. After the liberation, the country followed a controversial period of
denazification. Many collaborators and especially former leaders of the Nazi-held puppet regime in Athens were sentenced to death. General
Georgios Tsolakoglou, the first collaborationist prime minister, was tried by the Greek Special Collaborators Court in 1945 and sentenced to death, but his penalty, like most death sentences, was commuted to life imprisonment. The second collaborationist leader,
Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, who had fled to Germany after the Wehrmacht's withdrawal, was caught by the US military and was condemned to life imprisonment. In 1951, he was given parole and thus died outside prison.
Ioannis Rallis, the third collaborationist prime minister, was tried on a treason charge; the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. However, several lower and middle figures that had collaborated with the Germans, especially members of the
Security Battalions and the gendarmerie, were soon released and reinstated in their posts; in the developing
Greek Civil War, their anti-Communist credentials were more important than their collaboration. Indeed, in many cases the same people who had collaborated with the Germans and staffed the post-war security establishment persecuted leftist former Resistance members. Furthermore, during 1945, a Special Court on Collaborators in
Ioannina condemned,
in absentia, 1,930
Cham collaborators of the Axis to death (decision no. 344/1945). The next year the same court condemned an additional 179. However, the war crimes remained unpunished since the criminals had already fled abroad.
Israel Israel enacted the
Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law on 1 August 1950. Between 1950 and 1961, this law was used to prosecute around 40 Jewish
Kapos proven to have been Nazi collaborators. In 1988,
John Demjanjuk was sentenced to death as well, but the guilty verdict was later overturned by the Supreme Court on 29 July 1993. On 23 February 1965,
Latvian aviator and Nazi collaborator
Herberts Cukurs was assassinated by the
Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, after being lured to
Uruguay under the pretense of starting an aviation business.
Norway visited Norway in 1941. Seated (from left to right) are
Quisling,
Himmler,
Terboven, and General
Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, the commander of the German forces in Norway.
Vidkun Quisling, the war time Norwegian "
Minister President", and, among others,
Nasjonal Samling leaders
Albert Viljam Hagelin and
Ragnar Skancke, were convicted and
executed by firing squad. A total of 45 people were sentenced to death and 37 were executed (25 Norwegians and 12 Germans). Both at the time and later these sentences were the subject of some debate, since the decision to reintroduce capital punishment to the Norwegian legal system for the post war trials was based on clauses in military law. Capital punishment in the Criminal Code had been abolished in 1904. The decision was made by the exiled Norwegian government in London in 1944, later to be debated three times in the Parliament during the trials, and to be confirmed by the Supreme Court.
Poland In
occupied Poland the status of
Volksdeutsche had many privileges but one big disadvantage:
Volksdeutsche were conscripted into the
German Army. The Volksliste had 4 categories. No. 1 and No. 2 were considered ethnic Germans, while No. 3 and No. 4 were ethnic Poles that signed the
Volksliste. No. 1 and No. 2 in the Polish areas re-annexed by Germany numbered ~1,000,000 and No. 3 and No. 4 ~1,700,000. In the
General Government there were ~120,000 Volksdeutsche. After the war, Volksdeutsche of Polish origins were treated by Poles with special contempt, and also considered
traitors according to
Polish law.
German citizens that remained on territory of Poland became as a group
personae non gratae. They had a choice of applying for
Polish citizenship or being expelled to Germany. The property that belonged to Germans, German companies and
German states, was confiscated by the
Polish state along with many other properties in
Communist Poland. German owners, as explicitly stated by the law, were not eligible for any
compensation. Those who decided to apply became subject to a verification process. At the beginning of the process, many acts of violence against Volksdeutsche took place. However, soon the verification of Volksdeutsche became controlled by the juridical process and was completed in a more controlled manner.
Soviet Union and
Himmler The Soviet pursuit of collaborators began before the war was even over, as the government was eager to deter further collaboration. At the
Krasnodar Trial in 1943, eight Soviet citizens were condemned to death and three others to imprisonment for their collaboration with the
Einsatzgruppen. People who had been supportive of the occupation were killed by the Red Army during the German withdrawal. Russian and other Soviet members of the
Russian Liberation Army and the
Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, such as
Andrey Vlasov, were pursued, tried, and were either sent to
Gulag prison camps or executed. Several collaborators were prosecuted and imprisoned repeatedly, as Soviet law did not contain
double jeopardy protections and allowed them to be retried under the same charges.
Yugoslavia The reprisals for collaboration with the Nazis were particularly harsh in Yugoslavia, because collaborators were also on the losing side of a
de facto civil war fought on the Yugoslav territory during the war. The Communists executed many
Ustashe, as well as their collaborators, particularly in the
Bleiburg death marches. After the war, the
UDBA, Yugoslavia's
secret police, was sent overseas to find and eliminate several former Ustashe who fled the country, including the leader of the Ustashe and their
pro-Nazi government,
Ante Pavelić. They conducted a successful assassination of
Vjekoslav Luburić and others, and the extradition of
Zdenko Blažeković,
Andrija Artuković, and others. == See also ==