German police arrested three elderly men suspected of being former guards at Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz on Thursday.
The police raided the homes of nine elderly men, but only had sufficient evidence to arrest three, the Associated Press reports. The three men are 88, 92 and 94 and are living in Baden Wuerttemberg in southwest Germany. Only the 88-year-old man made a statement, in which he admitted to being an Auschwitz guard but said, the AP reports.
The arrests come after authorities said in September that they would investigate former guards at the death camps in an effort to prosecute surviving guards before its too late. The stepped up Nazi hunt was inspired partly by the conviction of Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk, who died in a nursing home in 2012 while appealing his conviction. Demjanjuk, who was born in Ukraine, was the first person to be convicted in Germany for being a guard in a camp without any evidence that he killed anyone.
German prosecutors say anyone involved in a death camp is an accessory to murder.
[AP]