Nazis in Australia: The History of the Special Investigation Unit

Forty years ago, the eminent Australian journalist Mark Aarons presented an ABC Radio National Series on Nazi collaborators and war criminals who had had settled in Australia after WWII. Following this reporting, Bob Hawke’s government amended the War Crimes Act (1988) and set up the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) to investigate and prosecute WWII Nazi collaborators suspected of having committed serious war crimes in Nazi-occupied European territories before migrating to Australia after the war. Headed initially by its Director, Bob Greenwood QC, and later by Graham Blewitt AO, the SIU leadership and investigators travelled to the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries where the war crimes against civilians were allegedly committed. One of the leading investigators, John Ralston AM, worked in these unfamiliar territories with local, non-English speaking authorities and witnesses. Holocaust expert, Professor Konrad Kwiet, SIU Chief historian, supported the investigations with archive-based historical evidence about Nazi crimes. Out of a list of hundreds of suspects, three, residing in South Australia, were charged with M**der and brought to committal hearing in the Supreme Court of South Australia. However, in spite of compelling evidence gathered by SIU investigators, the proceedings resulted in no convictions, and only one jury trial, that of Ivan Polyukhovich, which cleared the accused. In 1994, the Keating government closed the SIU.

The unique experience of the SIU investigations has been put on record in the recently published volume, Nazis in Australia: The Special Investigations Unit, 1987-1994 (Black Inc 2025), compiled and edited by Graham Blewitt and Mark Aarons, with contributions from SIU staff.

Three speakers —Graham Blewitt AO, John Ralston AM and Professor Konrad Kwiet— will discuss their SIU experience in conversation with Professor Ludmila Stern (UNSW), reflecting on the course and outcomes of the cases, and the importance of SIU’s legacy for future domestic and international criminal prosecutions.

Graham Blewitt, AO, was the Deputy Director and, then Director of the SIU (later the War Crimes Prosecutions Support Unit (1991 – 1994). In February 1994 he was appointed Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (The Hague), until 2004. In 2005, having returned to Australia, he was appointed a NSW Local Court Magistrate until his retirement in 2019. He is the author of Justice and War Crimes and the co-editor of the recent book, Nazis in Australia: The Special Investigations Unit, 1987-1994 (2025).

John Ralston, AM, is a former NSW homicide detective who investigated Nazi war criminals for the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Special Investigations Unit, followed by being Senior Investigator at the National Crime Authority. Having joined the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY, The Hague) as a foundation member, he served as an Investigation Team Leader, and then Chief of Investigations. From 2003 to 2016 Mr Ralston served as the Executive Director of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) of which he is the Vice-President. In 2004-5 he served as Chief Investigator for the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry for Darfur, Sudan and, since 2014, he was the Chair of the International Crimes Evidence Project that examined alleged crimes in the closing stages of the war in Sri Lanka. In 2022 he was recognised as a Member (AM) in the General Division of the Order of Australia for significant service to international human rights law.

Professor Konrad Kwiet is a German-born historian, initially in the German Department at UNSW, later taking up an appointment as Professor in German and European Studies at Macquarie University (1992), and later (2000) assuming the position of Adjunct Professor in Jewish Studies and as Roth Lecturer in Holocaust Studies in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at The University of Sydney. He has been the chief historian of the Australian War Crimes Special Investigations Unit; Visiting Professor in Jewish Studies in Amsterdam, Oxford, Heidelberg, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin; and Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. For more than 30 years Prof Kwiet has been the resident historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum.

Professor Ludmila Stern worked as a Russian/English interpreter and translator at the Special Investigations Unit (1989-1993). A scholar specialising in Interpreting in the School of Humanities and Languages, in the Faculty of ADA, UNSW, she is the founder of the UNSW Masters’ program in Interpreting and Translation (2006). Her research field includes the study of interpreting in international and domestic criminal courts and tribunals and, more recently, of the role of judicial officers in interpreted proceedings.

Introductions by A/Professor Jan Lanicek, School of Humanities and Languages, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW.

Date and time: 20 April, 6:00 -7:30 pm

Venue: E19 Patricia O'Shane (former Central Lecture Block), Theatre G04

Enquiries: [email protected]

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