A human face to Australia’s forgotten Nazi hunt

A Melbourne author has used fiction to revive the little-known story of Australia’s government-run Nazi hunting unit, which investigated more than 800 suspected war criminals and secured no convictions.

Tony Jaques, a former journalist and corporate communicator, published The Man in the Photograph in August. The novel follows Sam Ravitz, a 72-year-old Melbourne accountant and Stutthof survivor who opens his morning newspaper in 1989 and recognises, in a group photograph at a housing development launch, the SS officer who shot his brother in the camp’s bookkeeping unit.

Jaques said he came to the subject through military history and discovered how little was known about the Special Investigations Unit, set up by the Hawke government in 1987 and wound up under Paul Keating in 1994.

“I’ve been very interested in military history and World War Two history for a long time, and when I read about the Special Investigation Unit, I had not ever read about it before,” he told The AJN. “After some research, I realised that it’s actually quite little known in Australia.”

He said he chose fiction deliberately.