Deutsche Welle, 6 April 2013
German
investigators have said that they are on the trail of dozens of former guards
at Auschwitz. They said the suspects could face charges as accessories in the
murders of detainees at the camp.
The
suspects are all around 90 years old and live in various parts of Germany,
according to the head of the Central Office of the State Justice
Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes.
In a report
published in the Saturday editions of newspapers from Germany's WAZ media group
Kurt Schrimm also said that his investigators not only had names, but also knew
where the suspects lived. Preliminary investigations were to be launched in the
next few weeks.
Schrimm told
the newspapers that since the conviction of John Demjanjuk two years ago, it
was clear that "any activity in a concentration camp is enough to get a
conviction on accessory to murder." This, he said, was possible even if
direct involvement in a specific crime could be proved.
In 2011, a
Munich court sentenced Demjanyuk, a former guard at the Sobibor concentration
camp, to five years in jail after being convicted of 20,000 counts of being an
accessory to murder. Demjanjuk, a Ukraine-born American had faced a series of
trials prior to the Munich trial. He died in March 2012 at the age of 91.
Schrimm
also expressed confidence about the possibility of tracking down suspects
abroad, particularly in Brazil, where investigators have gained access to
immigration documents from the years following World War II, when many Nazi
henchmen fled to South America to avoid justice. "In Brazil, things don't
look bad," Schrimm said.
The
concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland, which was in
operation from 1942 and 1945 was the Nazis' biggest. An estimated 900,000
mostly Jews were killed in the camp's gas chambers, while 200,000 others died
through other means, including executions carried out by members of the SS,
hunger, or sickness.
The Central
Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National
Socialist Crimes, based in Ludwigsburg in southwestern Germany, has conducted
almost 7,500 preliminary investigations since it was established in 1958.It
does not actually pursue cases in court, but passes on the results of its
preliminary investigations on to police or state ministries, which have the
power to do so.
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