'Why didn’t the UK prosecute its Nazi collaborators?' with Professor Jon Silverman

Thursday 18th January
6.00pm
Livestreamed from the Quarry Whitehouse Auditorium, Selwyn College, The University of Cambridge
The UK parliament passed the War Crimes Act in 1991 to allow courts to prosecute the Nazi collaborators who had been living undisturbed in the UK for decades following WWII. Yet, despite the several hundreds of names brought under scrutiny, when the process came to an end in 2000 the Crown Prosecution Service had only managed to achieve one trial and conviction. Why?
Professor Jon Silverman (SE1968) will discuss his new book, ‘Safe Haven’, which seeks to answer that question. He will deliver a short lecture, followed by a conversation with the master of Selwyn College, Roger Mosey.
‘Safe Haven’, by Professor Silverman and Robert Sherwood, situates the UK within the broader context of war crimes investigations in the USA, Germany, and Australia. Drawing on previously unavailable archival documents, transcripts of interviews with suspects, and disclosures by senior lawyers and police offers in the War Crimes Units in parallel with the history of bungled investigations immediately after the war, Safe Haven considers for the first time why and how convictions failed to follow investigations.
Jon Silverman is an emeritus Professor of Media & Criminal Justice at the University of Bedfordshire. Prior to this, he was the Home Affairs Correspondent at the BBC for 13 years. In 1996, he was named Sony 'Radio Journalist of the Year' for his reports for the 'Today' programme (Radio 4) on the UK's Nazi war crimes inquiries.

[@naradaian]

Very interesting, as a new postgrad LA worker I had to visit a big flat in an Edinburgh tenement, gloomy but huge no lights on curtains mostly drawn to visit re a child worrying school staff so a home visit - I went into the gloomy sitting room…the entire 4 walls were lined with seats etc and a woman in Ukrainian dress sat in every one in complete silence….maybe 30+
None spoke english well - and the visit was one of the most peculiar I ever made in a lifetime of home visits…It took me over 20 years to grasp these were the women/families of the Ukraine SS - for heavens sake - who were so low in profile as to be completely forgotten about. Apparently a bunch of - ‘surrendered to the yanks ‘ Ukraine Banderites had been dispersed in and around Edinburgh in late 40’s and basically bubbled off by interested parties and only one of their officers was imprisoned but was the only Ukrainian with …unusual circumstances was ever referred to - and it was this officer whose men still revered as he took the rap for them.
I have been unhappy for a longtime about Mr Kolomoisky employing Banderites in the Asov Brigade etc - long before the recent fighting and wrote about the dangers of this employing nazis will inevitably entail…and here we are with appalling ziosettler nuts bombing a concentration camp they made earlier…times have changed and the nazis rebadged as corporately running western democracies…all of them
The chair needs a reality check - ‘is it judgmental to condemn these people? -for heavens sake the entire Canadian political,elite will know precisely why Ukrainian SS are sequestered in there…. There are no communities of non ex nazi Ukrainians in the diaspora - it pays too well to cooperate with the ‘intelligence’ community your speaker refers to. They run the ukrainian communities like clans