BERLIN — Germany has launched a war crimes investigation against an 87-year-old Philadelphia man it accuses of serving as an SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp, after years of failed US Justice Department efforts to have the man stripped of his American citizenship and deported.
Johann ''Hans'' Breyer, a retired toolmaker, admits he was a guard at Auschwitz during World War II, but says he was stationed outside the facility and had nothing to do with the wholesale slaughter of some 1.5 million Jews and others behind the gates.
The special German office that investigates Nazi war crimes has recommended that prosecutors charge him with accessory to murder and extradite him to Germany for trial on suspicion of involvement in the killing of at least 344,000 Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland.
The case is being pursued on the same legal theory used to prosecute John Demjanjuk, the late Ohio autoworker who died in March while appealing his conviction in Germany on charges he served as a guard at the notorious Sobibor death camp, also in occupied Poland.
The conviction was not considered legally binding because Demjanjuk died before his appeals were exhausted. But prosecutors maintain they can still use the same legal argument to pursue Breyer.