BERLIN — The Simon Wiesenthal Center launched a poster campaign in several German cities Tuesday appealing for help in tracking down the last surviving Nazi war criminals not yet brought to justice and promising compensation to those who provide useful information.
About 2,000 posters depicting the entrance gate of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz were put up in the cities of Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne asking the public to come forward with information that may lead to the arrest of Nazis some seven decades after the end of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
‘‘Unfortunately, very few people who committed the crimes had to pay for them,’’ Efraim Zuroff, the US-based Jewish center’s top Nazi hunter, told reporters. ‘‘The passage of time in no way diminishes the crimes.’’
The Wiesenthal Center is asking for tips to be called in to a hot line in Germany.
Underneath the black-and-white picture of the death camp on the poster, the following words are emblazoned in German on a blaring red background:
‘‘Late, but not too late. Millions of innocents were murdered by Nazi war criminals. Some of the perpetrators are free and alive! Help us take them to court.’’
Zuroff, who is the director of the center’s Israel office, estimated there are still about 60 people alive in Germany who are fit to stand trial for the crimes they allegedly committed.