German authorities arrested a suspected Auschwitz death camp guard Monday on allegations that he was involved in war crimes committed there between 1941 and 1945, the Associated Press reports.
Hans Lipschis, 93, was deported from the U.S. in 1983 for lying about his past as a Nazi. After "compelling evidence" emerged of his actions at Auschwitz, German authorities took Lipschis into custody, prosecutor Claudia Krauth said.
Lipschis admits that he was assigned to an SS guard unit at the death camp in Poland where about 1.5 million people — mostly Jews — were killed between 1940 and 1945. However, he claims that he was only a cook and took no part in any war crimes.
Krauth said that there is enough evidence for a judge to uphold a request for an arrest warrant to charge Lipschis as an accessory to murder.
While bringing formal charges to the alleged death camp guard will take another couple of months, Krauth said that Lipschis is in good enough health to be kept in detention during the process.
Lipschis does not have an attorney and has yet to have a public defender assigned to him, according to Krauth.
Chief Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Efraim Zuroff, said that Lipschis' arrest is a good start.
"This is a very positive step, we welcome the arrest," he said about the No. 4 target on his "most wanted Nazi war criminals" list.
"I hope this will only be the first of many arrests, trials and convictions of death camp guards," Zuroff said in a telephone interview from Israel, as quoted by the AP.
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