Cabinet papers 1992-93: end of Nazi hunt riled Israel

The Special Investigations Unit investigating Nazi war crimes made no succesful prosecutions in five years.

Michael Duffy said closing a Nazi-hunting unit would anger Israel.

The Keating government predicted relations with Israel would not be “seriously’’ affected by its decision in 1992 to close its Special Investigations Unit investigating Nazi war crimes.

A cabinet submission in August 1992 from attorney-general Michael Duffy predicted the decision to close the war crimes unit would attract criticism from Jewish groups in Australia and overseas.

The Keating government said the unit should be closed, given its failure to secure successful prosecutions and the resources required to keep it operating.

The Hawke government established the unit in 1987 amid fears Nazi war criminals might be hiding in Australia, but after five years it failed to produce any successful prosecutions.

In justifying the decision, Duffy wrote: “There will always be claims that there is just one more war crimes case that deserves investigation.

“Unless government is prepared to carry on investigations until it could be shown that all potential suspects are dead, any decision to stop investigations at a particular time will always attract criticism.”

The government said the decision to close the unit had attracted “an uncompromising and hostile campaign against Australia’’ by the then head of the Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, Ephraim Zuroff.

It also said former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir had raised the issue with foreign minister Gareth Evans in Israel but said the issue did not feature prominently in Evans’s visit.

“On balance, we do not think reaffirming the original decision that war crimes investigations be funded only until 30 June, 1992, would seriously affect Australia’s interests in Israel or our bilateral relations with Israel,” the cabinet papers say.