BERLIN: German authorities arrested yesterday a 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners.
Prosecutors in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said the man was believed to have worked at the camp between autumn 1941 and its closure
in 1945. Authorities declined to release the suspect’s name but media reports indicated it was Hans Lipschis, who figures among the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s most-wanted Nazis and is said to have served in the SS “Death’s Head” battalion.
The man, who was detained at his home, “appeared before a judge and was taken into custody”, the prosecutor’s office in the state capital Stuttgart said in a statement.
“The indictment against him is currently being prepared.”
Stuttgart prosecutors confirmed to AFP last month that they were working on a probe launched late last year against a suspect who had worked at Auschwitz. Lipschis has been living in the Baden-Wuerttemberg town of Aalen and reportedly told the authorities that he worked as a cook, not a guard, in the camp in occupied Poland.
However prosecutors said the evidence pointed to the fact that the suspect in question had broader responsibilities. AFP
