According to the Associated Press, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has identified 80 former members of the so-called Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi mobile death squads, who might still be alive.
Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center's Israeli office, told AP that he has sent a letter with a list of 76 men and 4 women to the German justice and interior ministries and asked them to invetigate.
The Einsatzgruppen, made up of primarily SS and police personnel, followed Nazi Germany's troops as they battled their way eastward in the early years of the war, rounding up and shooting Jews in the opening salvo of the Holocaust before the death camp system was up and running.
"In the death camps the actual act of murder was carried out by a very small number of people — the people who put the gas into the gas chambers — but the actual act of murder in the Einsatzgruppen was carried out individually," Zuroff said.
Zuroff narrowed down the list of possible suspects by choosing the youngest from a list of some 1,100 with dates of birth known to his organization, from the estimated 3,000 members of the death squads.
All 80 would be very old if still alive, born between 1920 and 1924, Zuroff said. "The hope is that as many as possible will be alive, but there's no guarantee obviously," he said. "But every person alive today is a victory of sorts."
The German Justice Ministry said it had passed the details of Zuroff’s letter to the special federal prosecutors' office that investigates Nazi-era crimes.