Free Republic

WALKING beside his dad, 11-year-old Walter Chmielewski watched as an emaciated man on death's door was dragged towards a crematorium. It was a harrowing sight, but one which was commonplace for Walter, who grew up in a Nazi concentration camp in Austria, of which his father Karl Chmielewski - a German SS officer dubbed the "Devil of Gusen" - was commander. More than 35,000 prisoners, most of which were Polish, Spanish Republicans, Soviet citizens and Italians, were slaughtered at Gusen - a subcamp of Mauthausen - during the Holocaust. Prisoners were subjected to starvation, heavy labour and mass executions and...

German prosecutors on Friday charged a 95-year-old man with more than 36,000 counts of accessory to murder over his alleged time as a Nazi concentration camp guard during World War II. The allegations against the accused, identified only as Hans H., concern atrocities committed at the Mauthausen camp in Austria. Hans H. is believed to have belonged to the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) between summer 1944 and spring 1945 at Mauthausen, part of the Nazis' vast network of concentration camps. Prosecutors argue that by working as a guard at the site, the accused contributed to tens of thousands of prisoner...

The death books seem utterly ordinary, their covers inscribed with neither swastikas nor other frightening Nazi symbols. They are just the black-and-white, cardboard-covered composition books that generations of schoolchildren have used for handwriting practice. And, indeed, every entry is in neat cursive. On April 20, 1942, the commandant of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria approved the special killing of 300 prisoners to mark the Fuehrer's birthday. The execution list runs for pages, each individual receiving a single line -- name, date of birth, place of birth, inmate number, and an epitaph, "By order of R.S.H.A. shot," the acronym for...

Associated Press JERUSALEM - A Nazi war criminal known as "Dr. Death" for sadistic experiments that killed hundreds of prisoners during World War II has been tracked down to Spain, an Israeli newspaper's Web site said Saturday. Spanish police said they had not yet found the man. The German weekly Der Spiegel said Spanish investigators believe the 91-year-old suspect, Aribert Heim, has been in Spain recently. Police said they had not found Heim during searches after receiving indications that he was living in the northeastern province of Girona. (snip) During the war, Heim earned the nickname of "Dr. Death" for...