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US holds alleged Auschwitz guard

June 19, 2014

An 89-year-old man has been detained without bail on a German arrest warrant that charges him with the murder of at least 216,000 men, women and children. The hearing follows an investigation by prosecutors in Bavaria.

https://p.dw.com/p/1CLkw
Jewish women and children deported from Hungary, separated from the men, line up for selection on the selection platform at Auschwitz camp in Birkenau, in Nazi-occupied Poland. Johann “Hans” Breyer, 87, of Philadelphia admits he was a guard at Auschwitz, but says he was never in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the part of the death camp used as a killing machine for Jews. World-War II-era documents obtained by The Associated Press indicate otherwise. Those files are now in the hands of German authorities, and could provide the legal basis for charging Breyer as an accessory to the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Nazi death camp. (AP Photo/Yad Vashem Photo Archives)
Image: picture alliance / AP Photo

The accused, a resident of Philadelphia, was ordered to be held without bail on Wednesday, charged with aiding and abetting the killings at Auschwitz.

Johann "Hans" Breyer, who was taken into custody by US officials on Tuesday night, appeared in court wearing an olive green jumpsuit and supported by a cane.

Breyer's attorney, Dennis Boyle, argued that he was too weak to stand trial. Breyer himself admits he was a guard at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in German-occupied Poland, but says he was stationed outside. He claims to have had nothing to do with the slaughter of some 1.5 million people behind the gates.

The New York Times quoted court documents stating that Breyer faced 158 counts of aiding and abetting Nazi atrocities.

The retired toolmaker, who was born in Czechslovakia, is believed to have joined the SS at the age of 17. Breyer's defense team claims he was coerced into doing so during World War II.

Mother emigrated from US to Europe

Breyer left for the US in 1952, but became the subject of deportation proceedings, started by the US Justice Department during the 1990s. His attorneys argued he was a naturalized US citizen because his mother had been born in Philadelphia, having moved to Europe as a child.

After years of failed US efforts to have Breyer stripped of his US citizenship, the latest hearing stems from an investigation by a prosecutor in the Bavarian town of Weiden, near where he last lived in Germany.

"Germany deserves credit for doing this - for extending and expanding their efforts and, in a sense, making a final attempt to maximize the prosecution of Holocaust perpetrators," Efraim Zuroff, veteran Nazi hunter and Jerusalem director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center told the AFP news agency in a telephone interview.

Breyer faces an extradition hearing on August 21, and will be held in custody until then. Until a ruling by a Munich court in 2011, which sentenced another US immigrant to five years in prison, only individuals shown to have personally committed atrocities could be prosecuted by German courts.

The ultimate decision about whether Breyer can be extradited to Germany rests with US Secretary of State John Kerry.

rc/lw (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)