Accused Auschwitz Guard Found Unfit to Stand Trial

A German court has determined that 94-year-old Hans Lipschis is unfit to stand trial due to advanced dementia after being charged with being an accessory to the murder of 10,510 people while stationed as a guard in Auschwitz concentration camp from 1941 to 1943. The charge leveled against Mr. Lipschis was part of a large scale effort to bring low-level Nazi collaborators to "justice" following the 2011 conviction of John (Ivan) Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk was the first low-level guard at a concentration camp to be convicted of murder charges without evidence of any specific crime. His conviction set the precedent that it is no longer necessary to provide evidence of physical participation in killing in order to convict and acted as a catalyst for so-called "Nazi Hunters" to go after alleged low-level concentration camp workers.

Mr. Lipschis was deported from the United States in 1982 for having failed to disclose his past involvement with the Nazis. He admitted to neighbors and media sources that he did work in Auschwitz, but only as a cook. After his deportation, he moved back to Germany where he has lived since. Lipschis was arrested by German authorities on May 6, 2013. Due to the dangerous Demjanjuk precedent and the fact that accused Nazi war criminals are not allowed to present a sufficient defense in German courts, we applaud this ruling.