'Why didn’t the UK prosecute its Nazi collaborators?': In conversation with Jon Silverman

Thu 18 January

Selwyn College

The UK parliament passed the War Crimes Act in 1991 to allow courts to prosecute the Nazi collaborators who had been living undisturbed in the UK for decades following WWII. Yet, despite the several hundreds of names brought under scrutiny, when the process came to an end in 2000 the Crown Prosecution Service had only managed to achieve one trial and conviction. Why?

Professor Jon Silverman (SE1968) will discuss his new book, ‘Safe Haven’, which seeks to answer that question. He will deliver a short lecture, followed by a conversation with the master of Selwyn College, Roger Mosey. We will be inviting questions from the audience both online and in-person.

‘Safe Haven’, by Professor Silverman and Robert Sherwood, situates the UK within the broader context of war crimes investigations in the USA, Germany, and Australia. Drawing on previously unavailable archival documents, transcripts of interviews with suspects, and disclosures by senior lawyers and police offers in the War Crimes Units in parallel with the history of bungled investigations immediately after the war, Safe Haven considers for the first time why and how convictions failed to follow investigations.

Jon Silverman is an emeritus Professor of Media & Criminal Justice at the University of Bedfordshire. Prior to this, he was the Home Affairs Correspondent at the BBC for 13 years. In 1996, he was named Sony 'Radio Journalist of the Year' for his reports for the 'Today' programme (Radio 4) on the UK's Nazi war crimes inquiries.

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