The arrest in America of an alleged concentration camp guard on Thursday marks a sea change in Germany’s legal approach to the prosecution of members of the dwindling number of war criminals who participated in the Holocaust, the Simon Wiesenthal Center stated on Thursday.

Speaking with The Jerusalem Post, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the center’s chief Nazi hunter, stated that the arrest of Johann Breyer, a resident of Pennsylvania, was significant in that it marked a shift in the burden of proof required for a successful prosecution.

The retired tool-and-die maker, born in Czechoslovakia, is accused of joining the Waffen SS at age 17, later serving as a camp guard and subsequently moving to the United States in 1952. Germany is pressing for his extradition.

Germany has issued a warrant for his arrest, US Magistrate Judge Timothy Rice said at Breyer's court appearance in US District Court in Philadelphia.

He was the subject of deportation proceedings in the 1990s when his attorneys argued he was a natural US citizen because his mother was born in Philadelphia. They also argued that Breyer had been coerced into joining the SS.

According to Zuroff, Germany would not have previously been interested in going after Breyer, as “evidence of a specific crime against a specific victim” was required. Evidence of service in a camp was deemed insufficient. After the successful 2011 conviction of Sobibor guard John Demjanjuk, however, the evidentiary bar was lowered, Zuroff stated, explaining that the case paved the way for a more vigorous approach to prosecuting Nazi crimes.

“For almost 60 years, any person the prosecutors wanted to prosecute, they had to prove that that person had committed a specific crime against a specific victim and in many cases that was quite hard to do, and many people in a sense got off the hook because of this requirement,” Zuroff explained.

Reacting to Breyer’s arrest, Zuroff stated that “this is a whole new ballgame” and that the results of the precedent set by the Demjanjuk trial have been “very dramatic.”

German prosecutors, he continued, “have already announced that they are recommending prosecution in 31 cases of people living in Germany, of Auschwitz guards, another 7 were found outside of Germany, and 20 guards from Majdanik, so this is more suspects that have been brought to justice in Germany than there have been in decades.”

“We’re very pleased that Germany has adapted this strategy, it is totally changed the legal landscape as far as Nazi war criminals go,” he said, adding that the Simon Wiesenthal Center will continue investigating and passing names of suspected war criminals on to German authorities.

jpost.com