89-Year-Old Toolmaker Arrested In Philadelphia On Nazi Death Camp Charges

An 89-year-old Philadelphia man was ordered held without bail Wednesday on a German arrest warrant charging him with aiding and abetting the killing of 216,000 Jewish men, women and children while he was a guard at the Auschwitz death camp.

The man, retired toolmaker Johann "Hans" Breyer, was arrested by U.S. authorities Tuesday night. Breyer spent the night in custody and appeared frail during a detention hearing in federal court, wearing an olive green prison jumpsuit and carrying a cane.

Legal filings unsealed Wednesday in the U.S. indicate the district court in Weiden, Germany, issued a warrant for Breyer's arrest the day before, charging him with 158 counts of complicity in the commission of murder.

Each count represents a trainload of Nazi prisoners from Hungary, Germany and Czechoslovakia who were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau between May 1944 and October 1944, the documents said.

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A court ruling in 2003 allowed him to stay in the United States, mainly on the grounds that he had joined the SS as a minor and could therefore not be held legally responsible for participation in it. His American citizenship stems from the fact his mother was born in the U.S.; she later moved to Europe, where Breyer was born.

89-Year-Old Toolmaker Arrested In Philadelphia On Nazi Death Camp Charges

Former Auschwitz medic arrested in Germany | World news | theguardian.com

Growing up I remember many news stories about the "capture" and trials. I remember the numbers on my "aunt's" wrist. As a senior in college, John Demjanjuk's prosecution was just beginning, a case I had followed up until his death in 2012. I remember the numbers stamped on the wrist of a waitress at one of my favorite eating haunts. Slowly the trials began to fade. We all got older victims, perpetrators, witnesses and those with an interest in seeing justice done. So many have gotten away, but yet,,,

German police have arrested a former Nazi medic who served at the Auschwitz death camp on multiple charges of aiding and abetting murder.

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The arrest followed a recommendation from the German office investigating Nazi war crimes to bring charges. It was the latest in a series of arrests since Germany launched a renewed drive to bring to justice the last surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust.

For more than 60 years German courts prosecuted Nazi war criminals only if evidence showed they had personally committed atrocities. But in 2011 a Munich court sentenced John Demjanjuk to five years in prison for complicity in the extermination of Jews at the Sobibor camp, establishing that all former camp guards could be tried.

"There cannot be a statute of limitation for crimes against humanity, and mass murderers must continue to live in fear of the long arm of the law," Lauder said.

Former Auschwitz medic arrested in Germany | World news | theguardian.com

See also: 
Nearly 70 Years Later, a New Round of Auschwitz Prosecutions

A different angle on the story from above. The Guardian article focused on one arrest, this piece talks of a list of 50 former guards who worked at the Auschwitz.

They worked as guards at the Holocaust’s most notorious death camp, and nearly seven decades later they may finally be brought to account before a court of law.

Germany’s Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes has prepared a list of 50 former guards who worked at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland and are still alive, said Kurt Schrimm, the head of the office.

Staff members searched old court records and Holocaust-related documents looking for names, and even traveled to Poland last year to try to augment their lists. One checked the names of the Auschwitz guards against databases to determine which were still alive.

The next step is ruling out those who were already tried, either by the occupation authorities or the German legal system. “We have to determine now whether or not these 50 people that we found on this list can be legally prosecuted,” Mr. Schrimm said Wednesday in a telephone interview.

The list includes names that have been known to his office since the Auschwitz trials in the ’60s as well as recent additions made last year, Mr. Schrimm said.