Feb 1, 2005 -- Efraim Zuroff, YU alumnus and chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is leading a mission to track down suspected Nazi war criminals in the country where Nazism was born. Germany is the last of nine countries where the Wiesenthal Center's "Operation: Last Chance" is being launched. "Germany is the culmination of the project," Zuroff told a reporter from the BBC. "It offers the most potential suspects, and in Germany there is the political will to prosecute such people. The question is whether the evidence will be sufficient." The BBC featured Zuroff, a graduate of Yeshiva University High School for Boys and Yeshiva College, in a report this week on what may be the final chance to find surviving Holocaust criminals. The effort has so far netted the names of 329 suspected perpetrators in eight, mostly Eastern European countries. Of the 329 names, 79 have been or will be delivered to local prosecutors. Germany, where the Nazi regime took root, has cooperated in the hunt for war criminals. But not all countries are forthcoming about their complicity in war crimes. Zuroff believes Operation Last Chance serves not only to bring Nazis to justice but also raises awareness about the Holocaust. A recent poll in England, for example, a country whose citizens weathered the bombs of the Luftwaffe for several years during World War II and whose sons fought against the Nazis, showed that 45 percent of British respondents never heard of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp, where more than one million Jews were killed between 1940 and 1945. During his hunt, Zuroff has discovered that Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism still exist. "...it's only on the periphery," Zuroff said. "But of course we all know how Hitler started and we all know that he was able to force his way into the mainstream and gain the support of the majority of Germans. So in that sense, we hope that Operation Last Chance will contribute to the fight against Holocaust denial and against anti-Semitism."