Topic: Efraim Zuroff

Efraim Zuroff (born August 5, 1948 in New York) is an Israeli historian of American origin, who has played a role in the efforts to bring Nazis indicted for war crimes to trial, earning the title "The Last Nazi Hunter". Zuroff is the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, is the coordinator of Nazi war crimes research worldwide for the Wiesenthal Center and the author of its annual (since 2001) "Status Report" on the worldwide investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals.

Born in New York, Zuroff moved to Israel in 1970 after completing his undergraduate degree in history (with honors) at Yeshiva University. He obtained an M.A. degree in Holocaust studies at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University, where he also completed his Ph.D., which chronicles the response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust and focuses on the rescue attempts launched by the Vaad ha-Hatzala rescue committee established by American Orthodox rabbis in 1939. In 2000, Yeshiva University Press and KTAV Publishing House published his study of the history of the Vaad ha-Hatzala, which was awarded an Egit Grant for Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Literature by the Israeli General Federation of Labor (Histadrut) and also received the 1999-2000 Samuel Belkin Literary Award for the best book published by a Yeshiva University alumnus in the field of Jewish studies.

In 1978, he was invited to be the first director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, where he played a leading role in establishing the Center’s library and archives and was historical advisor for the Center’s Academy award-winning documentary Genocide. He returned to Israel in 1980, where he served as a researcher for the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations. His efforts assisted in the preparation of cases against numerous Nazi war criminals living in the United States.