WASHINGTON — In what will most likely be one of the last Nazi cases on American soil, an 89-year-old Philadelphia man who served as an armed guard at Auschwitz during World War II died Wednesday, just hours before a judge ordered him extradited to Germany in the murders of 216,000 prisoners at the notorious concentration camp.

German prosecutors wanted to try the accused man, Johann Breyer, on 158 counts of aiding and abetting murder — one count for each of the 158 trainloads of Jews taken to Auschwitz to be gassed and killed during his time there in 1944.

Mr. Breyer, a retired toolmaker in Philadelphia, volunteered to serve in the Nazi SS at the age of 17 in what was then Czechoslovakia. He admitted to prosecutors in the United States that he had guarded prisoners at Auschwitz, but he insisted that he had not taken part in any killings and had not been aware they were happening. Prosecutors said they did not believe him.

In a ruling issued Wednesday morning, a federal judge in Philadelphia found that there was sufficient evidence of Mr. Breyer’s involvement at Auschwitz to extradite him to Germany to stand trial even after seven decades. “No statute of limitations offers a safe haven for murder,” wrote Magistrate Judge Timothy R. Rice.

The issue became moot, however, when Mr. Breyer’s lawyer revealed soon after the order was released that Mr. Breyer had died hours earlier. A clerk said the judge found out about his death only after issuing his order.

Mr. Breyer’s health had been an issue since he was arrested in his driveway last month. At a hearing before Judge Rice on June 18, Mr. Breyer’s lawyer argued that he should be released from custody because of his failing health and early signs of dementia. But the judge refused, citing “the serious nature of the crime,” and Mr. Breyer was held in federal custody for a month.

But on Saturday, he was moved from a federal detention facility to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia because of unspecified health problems, said Jim Burke, a spokesman for the United States Marshals Service.

On Monday, Judge Rice canceled a hearing scheduled for Thursday because of “serious medical issues requiring immediate hospitalization and treatment” of Mr. Breyer.

Officials did not release a cause of death, and Mr. Breyer’s lawyer was not available for comment.

His death leaves just one pending Nazi case in America: the deportation of Jakiw Palij, 91, a former Nazi camp guard now living in Queens. Mr. Palij wasstripped of his United States citizenship in 2003, but he has remained in Queens awaiting deportation for 11 years because no other country would accept him.

Dov Hikind, a state assemblyman from Brooklyn, began an advertising campaign several months ago to draw attention to Mr. Palij’s presence in the Jackson Heights neighborhood.

Finding countries to take back Nazis who have been stripped of their United States citizenship has been a constant struggle for officials since they began aggressively prosecuting such cases in 1979.

A handful of men have died in the last few years while awaiting deportation, including a 93-year-old Michigan man, John Kalymon, who served in a Nazi-controlled Ukrainian unit that rounded up and imprisoned Jews. Mr. Kalymon, stripped of his United States citizenship in 2007, died last month at his home outside Detroit.

Germany was unwilling for many years to take back Americans found to be complicit in Nazi crimes, refusing repeated requests from United States officials.

But Mr. Breyer’s arrest last month at the request of German prosecutors signaled a policy shift that began with the 2011 trial in Germany of John Demjanjuk, a former Ohio autoworker. Mr. Demjanjuk was convicted at the age of 91 of taking part in the murders of 28,000 people as a guard at the Sobibor camp. He died the next year.

nytimes.com