Poland revives probe into wartime Nazi death camp horrors

One aim of the new probe is to track down any living Nazi perpetrators, according to an announcement yesterday by the Institute of National Remembrance, a state body which investigates Nazi and communist-era crimes.

Nazi Germany opened Auschwitz in 1940, months after it invaded and occupied Poland. Over the next five years of war, the Nazis murdered as many as 1.5 million people at the expanded Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex, most of them Jews from across Europe, but also Poles, Roma, gays and others.

The investigation was opened by a branch of the remembrance institute in Krakow, which is located near Auschwitz.

Germany also operated other death camps across Poland – such as Chelmno, Treblinka and Belzec – and it was not immediately clear if new investigations into them are also planned.

A leading international Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, praised the move.

He said it “could have tremendous implications” in paving the way for new prosecutions thanks to the precedent set by the conviction of Ohio car worker John Demjanjuk in Germany earlier this year.

Demjanjuk was convicted of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder. It was the first time Germany had convicted someone as a Nazi camp guard based on the theory that, if he worked there, he was part of the extermination process, even without direct proof of any specific killings.

That has opened the door to many more possible prosecutions, and German authorities have since reopened hundreds of dormant investigations of Nazi death camp guards – men who are now so old that time is running out for prosecutors.

Mr Zuroff said tha t, should the Polish investigation track down any German perpetrators, he would expect them – like Demjanjuk – to be tried in a German court since Berlin requests extradition in such cases.

“I welcome any investigation that could lead to convictions,” Mr Zuroff, the main Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said.

However, he also noted that Poland is the country with the most ongoing investigations into Nazi crimes, but that these almost never result in prosecutions.