Elliot Welles (1927 - 2006)

Born in Vienna as Kurt Sauerquell in 1927, Elliot Welles, Holocaust survivor who spent a relentless crusade to find fugitive Nazis, died in New York on November 28, 2006 at the age of 79.
For more than two decades Welles directed the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League’s task force on NS war criminals until his retirement in 2003.

Welles began his quest to search for Nazi war criminals after World War II, starting with the man who killed his mother. He was known for his tireless research, often scouring archives in search of witnesses and clues to the wherabouts of such NS fugitives. Though he preferred to work quietly and discreetly in the background, he was considered one of the most influential forces in identifying Nazis who had settled in the United States and having them extradited to stand trial abroad. He was perhaps best known for his work on the case of Boleslav Maikovskis, who had been charged with ordering the arrest that led to the mass execution of 200 Latvian villagers during the war.