U.S. Arrests Alleged Nazi Camp Guard

U.S. authorities have arrested an 89-year-old Pennsylvania resident who is alleged to have been an SS Nazi guard.

Johann Breyer, a retired tool maker born in Czechoslovakia, is the oldest person ever accused of ties to the Third Reich by United States authorities who for decades have hunted for Nazis who escaped to America after the war. Mr. Breyer is accused

Mr. Breyer is accused of working as an armed guard at Auschwitz and taking part in the murders of “hundreds of thousands” of Jews from Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Germany in 1944. Officials said he had worked at the part of the camp known as “Auschwitz 2,” or Birkenau, a section that was particularly notorious. While the Nazis used other parts of Auschwitz for slave labor, the Birkenau section was used exclusively to kill victims in gas chambers.

Mr. Breyer, who immigrated to the United States in 1952, was arrested at his home in Philadelphia, and on Wednesday he was in Federal District Court there to face charges. Germany is seeking to have him extradited to stand trial under a sealed German indictment made public on Wednesday. Germany is charging him with 158 counts of aiding and abetting Nazi atrocities.

By: Cheston Catalano

Cheston Catalano is a Kentucky-based journalist whose work has been featured in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle. He is a long-time contributor to Liberaland.