Over the years, the interest in NAZI weapons, cults and secret projects seems to have grown. All sorts of stories have grown up around this stuff. As time goes by, it makes the waters more and more muddy. When I was young, there were all sorts of stories that stated that Hitler had escaped and went to South America. The country that was most often thought to be where he was hiding, was Paraguay. I am certainly no detective, but Paraguay is only a relatively small place, and it seems to me that if you had a lot of resources and wanted to find someone who was hiding there, someone who was as famous as Hitler, you should be able to do it. Paraguay is not exactly tiny, it is almost the same size as California, but given the resources of the world in looking for Hitler, you would have thought that if he was there, they would have found him. Look at the case of Martin Borman. He was another Nazi Leader. He had been reported as being in South America for years. Many thought that he was hiding in Argentina. His oldest son was Hitler's godson. He was believed to be alive by everyone and was tried in absentia at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to death. This had been based on a sighting that his long time chauffeur stated that he had made of him, a few weeks after the fall of Berlin. It turned out that this was all a fabrication and yet the sightings just kept pouring in for the next few decades. Workers in 1972, uncovered the remains of Martin Borman in West Berlin. It turned out that Borman had died by committing suicide with cyanide, when the Russians invaded Berlin.

When you read things like this, you just can't help but get suspicious of many of the stories about Nazis having escaped to South America. We have to remember that the higher up you were in the Nazi hierarchy, the harder it was for you to hide. Lower level Nazis were found hiding and for some it was many years later and they turned up in some unlikely places. One Nazi was found in England. He was 86 years old and was in a nursing facility. I guess he figured that at this point in his life, he either had nothing to lose, or that no one could possibly recognize him anymore. The funny part of this was that this guy was in the U.S. at one time, but was deported as an undesirable. He is said to have participated in the mass murder of at least 30,000 people, when he was in charge of a slave labor camp. He had gone to Canada, after he was thrown out of the U.S., but they deported him too. It makes you wonder, what did we know about him, when we deported him? Should we have had him arrested? Did we know about the war crimes and if not, why was he deported?

In an ironic statement, the last Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, stated, "I pray for the health of Nazis everyday, but only for those I can bring to justice". Zuroff is only 59 years old, so he should be able to finish his mission, because it is very doubtful that any Nazis from World War II, will still be alive after he dies, assuming that he lives out his full life span. He is following in the footsteps of Simon Wiesenthal, who lived to be 96 years old and was able to find over 1,000 Nazis. One of his most famous finds was Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo Jewish Department chief, who had overseen the genocide against the Jews. Eichmann was captured in Argentina in 1960. Zuroff is an American that emigrated to Israel and who didn't go there for the purpose of hunting Nazis. He stated that he is not happy with Austria because in the last three decades, they haven't convicted one Nazi war criminal. So far he states that he has exposed suspects in 22 countries. One of the most famous Nazis that Zuroff was seeking was the man known as Doctor Death, Aribert Heim, he was the number two ;person on the most wanted list. A huge reward had been offered for his capture and it was reported that he was seen in a remote town in Chile. When they got there, it turned out to be the wrong person. This was one of the biggest disappointments in Zuroff's life.

John Demjanjuk's last appeal to avoid deportation was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 19., 2008. He is an accused Nazi concentration camp guard. The U.S. took away his citizenship and ordered him deported to the Ukraine, where he was born, or Poland where the crimes were committed, or Germany. There was a problem however, no country wants him, so he is still here. They better hurry, the guy is already 88 years old and who knows how much longer he can last? This is not the first time something like this has happened. There are five other people sitting in the U.S. that were former Nazis, because the countries they were ordered deported to don't want them. Take the case of Romanian born Johann Leprich. He was a guard at Mauthausen camp in Austria. He was ordered deported in 2006, yet here he sits. Another guy is Jakiw Palij, who was born in Poland, that part of Poland has since become the Ukraine. He was a guard at Trawinki labor camp, a camp that killed over 6,000 prisoners in one day. Theodor Szehinskyj was born in the same part of Poland and was in a SS unit called the Death's Head Brigade and was a guard at the Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen and Warsaw concentration camps. Lastly there is Anton Titjung, who was born in Yugoslavia, but that part of the country has since become Croatia. He was a Waffen SS member and a guard at Mauthausen. These people and I use the term loosely, will probably sit here until they die of old age.

Josef Mengele was an infamous Nazi doctor who managed to escape Germany before the end of the war. He was very high on the wanted list, because of his brutal and callous acts of torture and murder that he claimed were in the name of science. Some called him by his nickname, Beppo. He was the physician in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. He supervised the selection of arriving transports and determined who would live as a forced laborer and who would die. He performed many inhuman experiments on the prisoners. He was soon to become known as the Angel of Death. When the war ended, he was able to hide in Austria under an assumed name and was then able to escape to South America. First he went to Argentina and later relocated to Brazil. He tried several cities, I guess he felt that he had to move around, so he went to Serra Negra, Moji das Cruzes and finally Bertioga. We never got him. He was out swimming one day and suffered a stroke and drowned. Many felt that they had been cheated out of his trial and a chance to watch him being executed.

One former Nazi was just found this year. It seems that this guy was a football fan. When you are the number 4 most wanted Nazi left, you should not be out in public, that is at least the way I feel about it. Apparently Asner Milivoj didn't agree with me. He stands accused of deporting hundreds of Jews, gypsies and Serbs to World War II death camps. He is the subject of an international arrest warrant and is also on Interpol's Most Wanted List. The man is 95 years old and is said to have been a former police chief and Gestapo agent. He was discovered by a British tabloid newspaper, The Sun, who tracked him down and secretly filmed him as he strolled arm-in-arm with his wife. Apparently this guy looks to be in great shape for his age. It is said that the locals knew his real identity and yet the police completely ignored him. Austria has insisted that Asner is too sick to be sent home.

How many more Nazis are still alive and enjoying quiet lives? I guess that this is a question that we will not be able to answer, but it is suspected that there are at least a few. People will not easily forget what they did to members of their families, their cruel tortures and murder. It will probably take until around 2025 to be sure that they are all gone. That would mean that the last one lived to the ripe old age of about 105, assuming that they were 20 years old in 1941. The world will never forget and it shouldn't.