PHILADELPHIA
(AP) -- An 89-year-old Philadelphia man was ordered held without bail
Wednesday on a German arrest warrant charging him with aiding and
abetting the killing of 216,000 Jewish men, women and children while he
was a guard at the Auschwitz death camp.
The
man, retired toolmaker Johann "Hans" Breyer, was arrested by U.S.
authorities Tuesday night. Breyer spent the night in custody and
appeared frail during a detention hearing in federal court, wearing an
olive green prison jumpsuit and carrying a cane.
Legal
filings unsealed Wednesday in the U.S. indicate the district court in
Weiden, Germany, issued a warrant for Breyer's arrest the day before,
charging him with 158 counts of complicity in the commission of murder.
Each
count represents a trainload of Nazi prisoners from Hungary, Germany
and Czechoslovakia who were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau between May
1944 and October 1944, the documents said.
Attorney
Dennis Boyle argued his client is too infirm to be detained pending a
hearing on his possible extradition to Germany. Breyer has mild dementia
and heart issues and has previously suffered strokes, Boyle said.
"Mr. Breyer is not a threat to anyone," said Boyle. "He's not a flight risk."
But
Magistrate Judge Timothy Rice ruled the detention center was equipped
to care for Breyer, who appeared to comprehend questions about the
nature of the hearing.
A law enforcement
officer also testified Breyer and his elderly wife grasped what was
happening during his arrest Tuesday outside their home in northeast
Philadelphia.
"They both understood," deputy marshal Daniel Donnelly said. "It wasn't news to them."
Breyer has been under investigation by prosecutors in the Bavarian town of Weiden, near where he last lived in Germany.
Breyer
has admitted he was a guard at Auschwitz in occupied Poland during
World War II, but has told The Associated Press he was stationed outside
of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp part of the complex and had
nothing to do with the wholesale slaughter of about 1.5 million Jews and
others behind the gates.
Thomas Walther, a
former federal prosecutor with the special office that investigates Nazi
war crimes in Germany, now represents family members of some of
Breyer's alleged victims as co-plaintiffs in the case. He called for a
speedy extradition.
"The German court has to
find late justice for the crimes of Breyer and for the victims and their
sons and daughters as co-plaintiffs," Walther wrote in an email to the
AP. "It is late, but not too late."
Prosecutors
in Weiden could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Their
investigation comes after years of failed U.S. efforts to have Breyer
stripped of his American citizenship and deported.
A
court ruling in 2003 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. His American
citizenship stems from the fact his mother was born in the U.S.; she
later moved to Europe, where Breyer was born.
During
Breyer's arrest Tuesday, he asked the marshals to retrieve papers in
his home that document his right to stay in the U.S., Donnelly
testified.
Breyer's wife and two grandsons
attended the hour-long hearing in Philadelphia on Wednesday. His
extradition hearing was scheduled for Aug. 21.
Efraim
Zuroff, the head Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in
Jerusalem, said he hoped there would be no obstacles to Breyer's
extradition and trial overseas.
"Germany
deserves credit for doing this - for extending and expanding their
efforts and, in a sense, making a final attempt to maximize the
prosecution of Holocaust perpetrators," he said in a telephone interview
from Jerusalem.
