ISRAEL has refused a Polish request for the extradition of an elderly Jewish man accused of “crimes against humanity” for the deaths of hundreds of Germans in a communist-run detention camp after the war.

Polish-born Solomon Morel, 86, fled to Israel in 1994 after his alleged role in the killings of 1,580 Germans was exposed by a Canadian author who traced survivors of the camp.

But Israel’s Justice Ministry has told Polish prosecutors there was “no basis whatsoever” to extradite Mr Morel. Israel and Poland have no extradition treaty. Israel refused an earlier request in 1998 on the ground that the statute of limitations had expired.

Polish investigators combed records and conducted further interviews with survivors of the Swietochlowice camp after the first rebuff, building a stronger case and elevating the charges to genocide, which has no statute of limitations. Mr Morel, who lost more than 30 members of his family in the Holocaust, served as camp commandant from February to November 1945 when many of the inmates died in horrific circumstances.

He was one of many Jews appointed by Stalin — who did not trust the ethnic Poles — to oversee the “de-Nazification” of the camps where 100,000 Germans were held and as many as 15,000 died of starvation, typhoid and torture in revenge for the Holocaust.

In his book, An Eye for an Eye: the Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against the Germans, the late John Sack interviewed camp survivors who had an indelible memory of Mr Morel and his callous treatment of the Germans.

One survivor recalled the night that Mr Morel arrived in the barracks at 10pm and announced: “My name is Morel. I am a Jew. My mother and father, my family, I think they are all dead, and I swore that if I got out alive, I was going to get back at you Nazis.”

The author, himself a Jew, describes the alleged atrocities committed at the camp: “The guards put the Germans into a doghouse, beating them if they didn’t say ‘bow-wow’. They got the Germans to beat each other; to jump on each other’s spines and to punch each other’s noses. German women were raped and attack dogs were trained to bite off men’s genitals. Many allegedly died when Mr Morel beat inmates over the head with a stool.

After the book was published, Mr Morel left Poland for Tel Aviv where he lives in hiding. He is believed to have changed his name but Israel’s Justice Ministry knows his whereabouts. Polish authorities accuse him of genocide. Ewa Koj, the Polish prosecutor, quoted from the Israeli Justice Ministry’s rejection letter: “There appears to be no basis to charge Mr Morel with crimes of ‘ genocide’. If anything, Mr Morel and his family were victims of crimes of genocide committed by the Nazis and Polish collaborators.”

The prosecutor accused Israel of double standards over the decision. “There should be one measure for judging war criminals, irrespective whether they are German, Israeli or any other nationality.”

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