Wiesenthal Center Calls Upon Spanish Government to Extradite Former Concentration Camp Guards Identified in the United States

Wiesenthal Center Calls Upon Spanish Government to Extradite FormerConcentration Camp Guards Identified in the United States

Jerusalem – The Simon Wiesenthal Center today called upon the Spanish government to extradite four former Naziguards, currently living in the United States, who served in concentration camps in which numerous Spanish citizens were tortured and murdered during World War II. The Center’sappeal, issued today in Jerusalem by its chief Nazi hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, comes in the wake of a petition filed late last week in Madrid, with the Center’ssupport, by “Nizkor” a Spanish human-rights organization, which called upon the Spain judicial authorities to request the extradition of Ivan Demjanjuk, Johann Lepprich, JosiasKumpf and Anton Tittjung, for their service in Flossenburg (Demjanjuk), Mauthausen (Lepprich and Tittjung) and Sachsenhausen (Kumpf). All four have already been ordered deportedfrom the U.S. for concealing their wartime activities, but none has hereto been accepted by any country, as a result of which they are still residing in the UnitedStates.

According to Zuroff:

“The willingness of the Spanish authorities to prosecute these Nazi war criminals would be of great significancegiven the current impasse in their cases in the US. Holding accountable guards from these camps in which so many innocent Spaniards were murdered would be a form of historicjustice, which is reinforced by Spain’s decades-long role as a haven for such prominent Holocaust perpetrators as Ante Pavelic and LeonDegrelle.”

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