German police investigating suspect in WWII massacre

Adolf S. suspected of being one of three SS men who massacred some 60 Hungarian-Jewish slave laborers month before end of war.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
German authorities have searched the residence of an 89-year-old former member of the Nazis' paramilitary SS suspected of taking part in the 1945 massacre of more than 60 Jews in Austria, police said Wednesday. State police in North Rhine-Westphalia told The Associated Press they are now evaluating documents seized from the residence of the man - identified only as Adolf S. - as part of their investigation into his involvement in the massacre in the village of Deutsch Schuetzen, southeast of Vienna. The man is suspected of being one of three SS men who massacred some 60 Hungarian-Jewish slave laborers in March 1945, just weeks before the end of World War II, police said. He is also believed to have shot in the back a Jew who could no longer walk during a march from Deutsch Schuetzen to Hartberg in Austria," police said later in a statement. Police said that the man invoked his right not to make a statement to them during Tuesday's raid in the city of Duisburg. The remains of the victims of the Deutsch Schuetzen massacre were found in 1995 in a mass grave by the Austrian Jewish association. A plaque now marks the site. Dortmund prosecutor Ulrich Maass, who heads a department that deals with Nazi-era crimes, opened an investigation about a month ago into the man after being alerted to his presence by an Austrian university student who had been researching the massacre. At the time, the Austrian press reported that the suspect had changed the spelling of his name after World War II, perhaps helping him go undetected for so long. Maass confirmed the raid, but said Wednesday he could give no more details about the case. The man is being investigated on suspicion of murder, for which there is no statute of limitations.