Morel in 1945

Morel in 1992, before he joined other criminals that Am Yisrael protects.

Salomon (Solomon or Shlomo) Morel (born November 15, 1919 in Grabowo, Poland) is a jew, who, between February and November 1945, was a member of the Communist State Security, known in polish language as Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (UB), and the commandant of the Stalinist-era concentration camp "Zgoda" in Świętochłowice, Poland. The camp held political prisoners. Most of the prisoners were civilians, including women and children. 1,695 persons, out of 6,000 inmates who had passed through the camp during this period, died. Morel has been accused of deliberately causing these deaths by giving low food rations, systematically torturing and mistreating prisoners, and failing to take sanitary precautions. In 1992, he fled to Israel after the Polish media had begun to publicize his case. He has refused to return to Poland, where he is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel has rejected several Polish requests for extradition, the last one in July 2005.

Morel was the son of a baker, as the family business went badly, he moved to his aunt in Łódź where he worked as a salesman. After the war started he returned to his parents. He along with his family hid when the war broke out in order to avoid being deported to a ghetto. At this point, there are somewhat divergent accounts of Morel's activities. According to the Polish IPN, in charge of prosecuting war criminals and the initiator of the extradition request, in the beginning of 1942 he, alongside with his brother, organised a criminal band, robbing local people. Their criminal activity ended when during one of their robberies they were captured by members of the communist Polish People's Army. According to the IPN, to avoid punishment Morel blamed all fault on his brother, and then joined the communists partisans.

Zgoda camp was set up by the Soviet NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, after the Red Army's 'liberation' of southern Poland. The camp was later handed over to the communist polish secret service, the notorious Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (UB). On March 15, 1945, before the war ended, Morel became a chief of the forced labor camp.

Current research shows that 1,695 prisoners died due to the epidemic of dysentery, typhus and typhoid fever which resulted from hunger and bad sanitary conditions in the camp, and that Morel not only did nothing to prevent the spread of their diseases but in fact created conditions to facilitate their spread. He is charged with creating unbearable life conditions threatening of biological annihilation, specifically starvation, torture and physical and psychological abuse. As early as 1945 Salomon Morel's superiors from the Ministry of Public Security (MBP) - Prison System Department affirmed his responsibility for the spread of epidemic and penalized him for 3 days of house arrest.

In 1998, an extradition request for Morel was rejected by Israel. A reply sent to the Polish Justice Ministry from Israeli authorities said that Israel would not extradite Morel as the statute of limitations had expired on the crimes detailed. In April 2004, Poland filed another extradition order against Morel, this time with fresh evidence, upgrading the case to "crimes against humanity." In July 2005 this request was again formally refused. The response rejected the more serious charges as being false, and again rejected extradition on the grounds that the statute of limitations against Morel had run out, and that Morel was in bad health. Ewa Koj, a prosecutor with the Polish government-run National Remembrance Institute, critized the decision saying:

"How can a statute of limitations run out on crimes against humanity? There should be one measure for judging war criminals, irrespective whether they are German, Israeli, or any other nationality".

Morel himself states that he's innocent of any wrongdoing, dismissing the allegations as an "anti-semitic plot". Just look at his face... of an old evil man!

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