Hans Lipschis, a 93-year-old alleged former Auschwitz guard who once lived in the U.S. on suspicion of accessory to murder, the Associated Press reported. Lipschis was taken into custody Monday after prosecutors concluded there was 'compelling evidence' he was involved in crimes at the death camp while there from 1941 to 1945.
While Lipschis acknowledged he served with the Nazi SS in the notorious death camp, he claimed he was only a cook. He maintains he was not involved in any war crimes.Bringing formal charges, a process similar to a U.S. grand jury indictment, would take another two months, she said.
A doctor has confirmed Lipschis' health remains well enough for him to be kept in detention.
Lipschis does not currently have an attorney, and a public defender has yet to be appointed, reports said.
Lipschis was deported from the U.S. in 1983 for lying about his Nazi past when he immigrated to Chicago in the 1950s after the war. With no evidence linking him to specific war crimes, however, it was impossible under previous German law to bring charges against him in Germany.
The case is now being pursued on the same legal theory used to prosecute former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk, who died last year while appealing his 2011 conviction in Germany for accessory to murder on the grounds that he served as a guard at the Sobibor death camp.
A person who served at a death camp can be charged with accessory to murder because the camp's sole function was to kill people.
Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi hunter with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called the arrest of Lipschis, - who is No. 4 on his current list of "most wanted Nazi war criminals," said, "This is a very positive step, we welcome the arrest," he said in a telephone interview from Israel. "I hope this will only be the first of many arrests, trials and convictions of death camp guards."
In an interview last month with Die Welt newspaper at his home in southwestern Germany, Lipschis said he spent his entire time as a cook and had witnessed none of the atrocities. He did say, however, that he "heard about" what was going on.
About 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were killed at the Auschwitz camp complex between 1940 and 1945.
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