Auschwitz death camp guard, to face trial as Germany makes desperate bid to jail former S.S. men before they die peacefully of old age

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

German prosecutors have started proceedings against a former Auschwitz death camp guard in a last ditch bid to bring 50 former SS men to trial before they die peacefully of old age.

Hans Lipschis, 93, is expected to be the first brought to court after investigations were launched by German officials several weeks ago into the Auschwitz guards who escaped after WW2.  Prosecutors in Stuttgart this week confirmed the criminal probe launched against him.

Lipschis was born in Lithuania in 1919 and was granted 'ethnic German' status in 1943. He is accused of working at Auschwitz-Birkenau as a member of the S.S. from 1941 to 1945 and is suspected of participating in murder and genocide.
Lipschis’ name was added a few weeks ago to a list of wanted Nazi criminals published by Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's office in Israel.

'Work Makes You Free': The 'Arbeit Mact Frei' sign still hangs above Auschwitz concentration camp in a haunting reminder of the atrocities inflicted there - now a museum.

Chilling: Hans Lipschis, born in Lithuania in 1919, was granted 'ethnic German' status in 1943 - his ID Card from Auschwitz

 

Nice life for guards: an accordionist leads a sing-along for SS officers at their retreat at Solahutte outside Auschwitz in 1944. Metres away, Jews were being murdered in their thousands

Over 1.2 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland during the war.

A German newspaper tracked Lipschis to a retirement home near Stuttgart where he denied the charges, claimed he knew nothing of the horrors at the extermination camp and that he was a 'cook for the entire time I was there.'  Paperwork shows he was a member of the SS–Totenkopf Sturmbann, or Death’s Head Battalion, which guarded the camp. These men also supervised the  offloading of trains that brought the doomed victims from across Europe to Auschwitz. In the past, German prosecutors relied on eyewitness testimony or paperwork to bring murder charges against suspected war criminals but the conviction of Sobibor death camp guard John Demjanjuk in 2011 in Munich set a new precedent in which it was enough  to have served at a site of mass extermination without specific acts being proved.

In 1956 Lipschis fled to the United States and lived in Chicago for 26 years, but was deported to Germany in 1983 after he was identified by the U.S. as a Nazi war criminal.

'The Gate of Death': Auschwitz II-Birkenau's main guard house which prisoners called "The Gate of Death". Over 1.2 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland during the war

 

Haunting: A handful of haunting photographs taken during the camp's liberation are haunting reminders of the unimaginable horror that the prisoners of Auschwitz faced

Convicted: The conviction of Sobibor death camp guard John Demjanjuk in 2011 set a new precedent where it was enough for people to have served at a site of mass extermination without specific acts being proved

Once the precedent was set in the Demjanjuk case, prosecutors plan to put Lipschis on trial without any specific knowledge of what he did during his term there. 'It is almost certain that he will be the first to be brought to court,' stated the German newspaper Die Welt.

Kurt Schrimm, who heads the German office for investigating Nazi crimes, said the investigations had already led to information about numerous suspects, all of whom reside in Germany and are about 90 years old.