Film Viewing: The Accountant of Auschwitz and Discussion with Eli Rosenbaum

The Accountant of Auschwitz takes place seventy years after World War II where Oskar Gröning, one of the last surviving members of the SS, goes on trial as an accessory to the M**der of 300,000 people at the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the film guest speaker Eli Rosenbaum will lead a discussion titled “The Post-War Pursuit of Nazi War Criminals: Justice-Escape from Justice.”

Eli Rosenbaum retired earlier in 2025 after a 38-year career at the United States Department of Justice, where he led the investigation and prosecution of a broad range of human rights violators, from World War II Nazi criminals to Rwandan genocidaires and beyond. Under his leadership as Director of the Justice Department’s former Office of Special Investigations (OSI) from 1995 to 2010, his office won more cases against Nazi criminals than did the governments of the rest of the countries of the world combined. He subsequently served (2010 to January 2024) as Director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy in the Justice Department Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP).

In 2020, in the most recent WWII Nazi case he personally tried, a new U.S. “cold case” record was established for the longest time span (75 years) between the commission of crimes and those crimes being proved against a defendant in a court of law. In June 2022, Rosenbaum was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to serve as the Justice Department’s first-ever Counselor for War Crimes Accountability and to head the agency’s newly created War Crimes Accountability Team (WarCAT), to coordinate the Department’s efforts to pursue accountability for atrocity crimes committed in the wake of the full-scale invasion launched by Russia earlier that year against Ukraine. In December, WarCAT's efforts led to the indictment of four Russia-affiliated military personnel for war crimes committed in Ukraine – making the United States the first, and still only, national jurisdiction other than Ukraine to prosecute alleged Russian war criminals.

During a 1980’s break in his federal service, Rosenbaum was a corporate litigator in Manhattan with the law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. He is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (B.S. and MBA degrees in Finance) and Harvard Law School (J.D.). Rosenbaum is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the Attorney General’s David Margolis Award for Exceptional Service (the Justice Department's highest award for employee performance), the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service, the Anti-Defamation League’s Heroes in Blue Award, the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust’s Humanitarian Award, the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Human Rights Law Enforcement, the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Special Initiative, the Assistant Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service, the Assistant Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service, the Virginia Law Foundation’s Rule of Law Award, and the Justice Department Criminal Division’s highest award for career accomplishment, the Henry E. Petersen Memorial Award. In September 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded to Rosenbaum the Order of Merit, conferring the title Chevalier of the Order of Merit, for support he has rendered to Ukraine’s pursuit of justice in the wake of the Russian Federation’s aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. In 1997, he was selected by the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Law School to be the recipient of the school’s Honorary Fellowship Award, presented annually to one attorney “who has distinguished himself or herself in commitment to public service” by “ma[king] significant contributions to the ends of justice at the cost of great personal risk and sacrifice.” Rosenbaum’s 1993 book, Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover-Up, which recounted the investigation he led that resulted in the worldwide exposure of the Nazi criminal past of former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, was selected by The San Francisco Chronicle for “Best Books of 1993” and by The New York Times for “Notable Books of 1993."

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