Germany launches Nazi war crimes probe against Philadelphia man
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, The Associated Press has learned, following years of failed U.S. 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 told the AP 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 occupied Poland.
The AP also has obtained documents that raise doubts about Breyer's testimony about the timing of his departure from Auschwitz.
The case is being pursued on the same legal theory used to prosecute late Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk, 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. Under that line of thinking -- even without proof of participation in any specific crime -- a person who served as a death camp guard can be charged with accessory to murder because the camp's sole function was to kill people.
Experts estimate that at least 80 former camp guards or others who would fall into the same category are likely still alive today, almost 70 years after the end of the war.
Authorities in the Bavarian town of Weiden, who have jurisdiction, are currently trying to determine if the evidence is sufficient for prosecution. A German official working on the case confirmed that Breyer was the target of the probe; he spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Breyer acknowledged in an interview in his modest row house in northeastern Philadelphia that he was in the Waffen SS at Auschwitz but that he never served at the part of the camp responsible for the extermination of Jews.
"I didn't kill anybody, I didn't rape anybody -- and I don't even have a traffic ticket here," he told the AP. "I didn't do anything wrong."
Note that he gives a denial of killing but also adds in "rape" as well. This may be due to knowledge of rape within the camp. The assertion of the camp at Aushwitz was "killing" and if there was no question about "rape", it should be considered a sensitive topic for the subject.
He said he was aware of what was going on inside the death camp, but did not witness it himself.
"We could only see the outside, the gates," he said.
Stronger would have been "I could only see..." and not the use of the plural pronoun, "we" by the subject.
Please note that he did not say he could not see killings on the outside, nor at the gates. This is where escapees would be re-captured or killed. Also note that there were two camps there; one specifically for killing while the other was a work camp where victims were worked to death, or were used for various experiments, including medical experiments designed to learn how much pain or cold, for example, a human could tolerate before dying. It is difficult to read detailed accounts of these experiments.
There were also experiments as to the use of human skin, with Russian prisoners of war particularly 'desirable' for their tattoos. It is said that the wives of SS guards "liked" the look of Russian prisoners' tattoos, so their skins were "harvested" for decorations, lampshades, and such, as their skulls, particularly of young prisoners, used as paper weights for the amusement of the SS and their families.
Evil has no statute of limitations. Guilt is not expunged by time.
Breyer said he had recently suffered three "mini-strokes." But he was cogent and clear as he talked about his past for more than an hour, sitting in his living room.
It is a shame that the reporter did not include lengthy quotes for us.
For more than a decade, the Justice Department waged court battles to try to have Breyer deported. They largely revolved around whether Breyer had lied about his Nazi past in applying for immigration or whether he could have citizenship through his American-born mother. That legal saga ended in 2003, with a ruling that 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.
Breyer testified in U.S. court that he served as a perimeter guard at Auschwitz I, which was largely for prisoners used as slave laborers, though it also had a makeshift gas chamber used early in the war; it was also the camp where SS doctor Josef Mengele carried out sadistic experiments on inmates.
But he denied ever serving in Auschwitz II, better known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, the death camp area where the bulk of the people were killed. He also said he deserted in August, 1944 and never returned to the camp, though eventually rejoined his unit fighting outside Berlin in the final weeks of the war.
A U.S. Army intelligence file on Breyer, obtained by the AP, calls that statement into question.
In 1951, American military authorities in Germany carried out a background check on Breyer when he first applied for a visa to the U.S. The file from that investigation lists him as being with a SS Totenkopf, or "Death's Head," battalion in Auschwitz as late as Dec. 29, 1944 -- four months after he said he deserted. The Army Investigative Records Repository file was obtained by the AP from the National Archives through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The document is significant because judges in 2003 said Breyer's testimony on desertion was part of what convinced them that his service with the Waffen SS after turning 18 might not have been voluntary, further mitigating his wartime responsibility.
Also weighing in Breyer's favor with the judges was his testimony that he refused to have the SS tattoo; he does not have such a mark today or evidence that one was removed.
Kurt Schrimm, the head of the specials prosecutors' office in Ludwigsburg, which carried out the Breyer probe before it was turned over to Weiden prosecutors, said he felt there was sufficient evidence to bring charges against Breyer, although he declined to discuss details.
"All of these guards were stationed at times on the ramps (where train transports of prisoners were unloaded), at times at the gas chambers and at times in the towers," he said.
Weiden prosecutors, who were chosen because the office is nearest where Breyer last lived in Germany, say it could take several months before deciding whether to file charges.
A former prosecutor in Schrimm's office, Thomas Walther, said he had known of the file on Breyer from his time there. He is now already representing, pro bono, a woman who lost her two siblings in Auschwitz at the time that Breyer is alleged to have been there. The woman will join any prosecution as a co-plaintiff as allowed under German law. Walther said he has established the email address auschwitz.coplaintiff(at)gmail.com for other victims' families.
"Time is swiftly running out to bring Nazi criminals to justice," Walther said. "I hope that prosecutors in Weiden will act soon on this case."
The Breyer case was handled in the U.S. by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations. Eli Rosenbaum, who previously headed the office, would not comment on any details of evidence that had been collected against him, nor say whether American agencies were involved in helping with the German probe. Rosenbaum is now with the Justice Department's Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, into which the OSI was merged.
Breyer was born in 1925 in what was then Czechoslovakia to an ethnic German father and an American mother, Katharina, who was born in Philadelphia. Slovakia became a separate state in 1939 under the influence of Nazi Germany. In 1942, the Waffen SS embarked on a drive to recruit ethnic Germans there and Breyer joined at age 17. The fact he was a minor at the time was critical in the 2003 decision to allow him to stay in the United States.
Called up to duty in 1943, Breyer said he was shipped off the same day to Buchenwald -- in Germany -- where he was assigned to the Totenkopf.
By treaty, the U.S. can extradite its citizens to Germany. But Breyer said he would fight any attempts to take him away from the U.S. and his wife and family.
"I'm an American citizen, just as if I had been born here," he said in his Philadelphia home. "They can't deport me. Perhaps not.
5 comments:
I can't bring myself to read or watch anything about the Holocaust any more. I have seen and read enough over the years, my heart and stomach cannot take it any more - sorry but I always skip over these articles :( I just cannot comprehend the truly horrific crimes that were inflicted on so many innocent people :(
I agree that the Holocaust was a terrible, horrible tragedy. However, I question the usefulness of spending resources trying to prosecute an 87 year old man whose alleged crimes do NOT include actually committing rape, murder etc. As far as we know, once he got out of that situation, he has lived an exemplary life. I doubt that he knew, when he joined the glorified SS at the age of 17, that he was going to be posted as a guard as a death camp. I doubt that he could have done anything to put a stop to it as an 18 year old perimeter guard; he himself could have been executed for insubordination or desertion if he had tried.
IMO these resources could be MUCH better spent on dealing with the criminals who are out there committing rapes, robberies, murders etc. right now, not an old man who was too cowardly to take a stand against evil 70 years ago but who never hurt anyone himself.
Hi Katprint.
We only have his denials he never committed rape or murder.
By your premise anyone who assissted a criminal today in a crime could claim they didn't do it as they were threatened if they didn't help.
Therer are plenty out there who helped the victims of the holocaust even when they jnew if caught they would be executed.
War criminals will always minimise their involvement, particularly those of WWII. The crimes perpetrated against the Jews, Gypsies, Children, Elderly, Infirm, POW's and so on were so abhorrent the pepetrators knew what the penalty would be if they were caught, they knew what would happen if they were even suspected of involvement.
Deny Deny Deny became the watchword if they were to survive let alone stay free.
The guards knew exactly what was going on in the camps, it would be impossible not to know.
Pleading ignorance was not an excuse.
As a guard he had a duty to stop the inmates escaping and if they did and were caught bringuing them back.
I believe that anyone involved in the camps must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, they should continue looking until it is physically impossible for anyone who could have served at the camps to be alive.
Just because he didn't murder and rape once the war was over does not excuse any crimes he did during the war.
It would be akin to saying (should he still be alive today) john wayne gacy did a lot of charity work helping disabled kids so we sgouldn't prosecute him for all the murders he committed.
It is like saying we mustn't prosecute a paedophile priest because when he wasn't raping little boys he was doing god's work, ministering to the sick and poor.
It is like saying we musn't prosecute jerry sandusky for raping boys as he founded a charity to help disadvantaged bioys as well as helping coach in Penn State.
When he wasn't being an abuser he was an all round good guy.
A crime is a crime, good deeds can be and are used to mitigate the penalty but there must still be punishment for the crime, justice must be seen to be done for the victims and their loved ones.
Not a good way to spend the last few years of life.
In Nazi Germany, he would have been forced to become a Nazi soldier as he would have had no choice in the matter. The fact that he was only 17 at the time was likely the norm. Small children were spys for the soldiers then, just like American soldiers turn children against their parents in other countries, these Nazi children reported on others, too.
"Evil has no statute of limitations. Guilt is not expunged by time."
I strongly disagree as there are many elderly people guilty of something. Dragging them out of the nursing homes and tormenting them now is more evil than the atrocities of WWII, imo. These people would feel no guilt as they did as they had to do to survive. To keep tormenting them is only fodder for those who prefer to keep it going for the sake of the stories their ancestors told, the beleived, and formed a pseudo-alliance with emotionally.
Laying guilt onto others seems to be the big thing these days, almost Jewish-like sterotype. Why do these people do it? Money!
How to Build the Final Solution.
Create a Architectural Blueprint.
Hire the Best, the Brightest, the Most Ambitious.
Killing is the side dish.
What's a couple of million innocent Poles, Czechs, Jews, Women, Children, Invalids, Elderly, Non-Aryans, Non-Party Liners, and anyone else that didn't make the cut?
The Power and Glory of Evil.
No statute of limitations on that one.
Check out the statistics on mass genocide:
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html
Hitler's Germany ranks 2nd to Mao Zedong's China & Tibet.
Apparently nobody owns the corner market on genocide.
Justice has a long way to go just to keep up with the spin on that axis.
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