Three suspected former Auschwitz guards arrested.

[Scout]

This just in today:
Three suspected former Auschwitz guards arrested in Germany.

Germany has arrested three men suspected of being former SS guards at the Auschwitz death camp in a series of home raids across three states, prosecutors said on Thursday.

The three men remanded in custody on Wednesday were aged 88, 92 and 94 and lived in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg, said prosecutors in the city of Stuttgart.

They are suspected of having participated in murders at the Nazis' extermination camp in occupied Poland, where more than 1 million people were killed in the second world war.

The three elderly men underwent medical tests and then faced a judge who confirmed their fitness to be detained in a prison hospital, prosecutors said in a statement.

Further home raids were carried out at three more locations in the state, as well as at other homes in the western states of Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia.

"Various records and documents from the Nazi era were seized, and their evaluation is ongoing," said the statement about the six Baden-Württemberg home raids.

Frankfurt prosecutors separately confirmed two raids in Hesse state Wednesday, in which police searched the homes of men aged 89 and 92 but reported no arrests.

The men were suspected of having served as Auschwitz SS guards from 1942 to 1944.

The German office investigating Nazi war crimes last year sent files on 30 former Auschwitz personnel to state prosecutors with a recommendation to bring charges against them.

The renewed drive to bring to justice the last surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust follows a 2011 landmark court ruling.

For more than 60 years German courts had only prosecuted Nazi war criminals 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, where he had served as a guard, establishing that all former camp guards can be tried.

More than 1 million people, mostly European Jews, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, operated by the Nazis from 1940 until it was liberated by Russian forces on 27 January, 1945.



Three suspected former Auschwitz guards arrested in Germany | World news | theguardian.com

[RH1941]

A little late

[Scout]

My sentiments exactly.

[harryamb2]

amazing how they got away for so long,what about the Dachau guards did they get all them.or were the Waffen SS men the Americans machine gunned down the only ones to take the blame just because they where near the KZ.

[Gunny Hartmann]

It's very strange why the German government is being so pro active in hunting war criminals when so many of them must already be dead, the last time i was in Berlin last August there were posters all over the city offering 25,000 euros reward for information leading to the prosecution of said war criminals!..
germany_nazi_hunting-feature.jpg

[big ned]

How long before this is locked? I say it's never too late, if they're guilty jail 'em for whatever is left of their lives, if they live through the protracted legal arguments and processes of a trial that is....

[Gunny Hartmann]

How long before this is locked? I say it's never too late, if they're guilty jail 'em for whatever is left of their lives, if they live through the protracted legal arguments and processes of a trial.

Word!...

Ned what i meant is i'm sure this would have been far more successful 20 years ago when there were more of 'em to prosecute!..

[big ned]

It's very strange why the German government is being so pro active in hunting war criminals when so many of them must already be dead, the last time i was in Berlin last August there were posters all over the city offering 25,000 euros reward for information leading to the prosecution of said war criminals!..
germany_nazi_hunting-feature.jpg

Short answer is: Because it's now easier. After the 2011 ruling by German courts, the prosecution now only has to prove that the accused is guilty of being an 'accessory to murder', which can be proved by tracing the defendants war records that are on file. You no longer require a witness to say " I saw that bastard murder my fellow prisoners", as documentary proof of serving in a concentration camp, at whatever level, is sufficient to be charged as above. There are around 50 (getting less every month) German citizens who are looking at the same treatment as these three, this is just the start, but time is of the essence of course.

[Gunny Hartmann]

The quicker the better Ned!....

[FALLSCHIRMJAGER]

I hope and pray that justice is served on those who are guilty of these horrendous acts , and that they live long enough to take the consequences(even though that is nothing compared to the crimes that were committed!). Leon.