Madrid – Spanish Prosecutor Targets Alleged Nazi Guards in U.S.

Madrid – A prosecutor in Spain has requested arrest warrants for three former Nazi collaborators — one of them from metro Detroit — for alleged complicity in the deaths of thousands of Spanish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

Prosecutor Pedro Martinez Torrijos requested warrants Friday for Johann Leprich of Clinton Township; Anton Tittjung of Kewaunee, Wis., and Josias Kumpf, formerly of Racine, Wis.

There was no immediate comment from Leprich’s family. U.S. authorities said they have been trying to deport Leprich and Tittjung to any country willing to accept them.

A Spanish judge, Ismael Moreno, is to decide whether to approve the warrants. He is conducting an investigation at the behest of a Brussels, Belgium-based human rights group, Equipo Nizkor, which went to court last summer to seek the indictments of the three former camp guards and John Demjanjuk, a retired Cleveland autoworker who was deported this month to Germany.

The group says thousands of Spaniards who fled their country during the Spanish Civil War and were later captured while fighting the Germans in France were among the millions killed in Nazi concentration camps.

Torrijos said in his request Friday that “the investigation carried out so far has confirmed at least circumstantially that the suspects took part in the events that occurred” at three Nazi death camps — Flossenberg and Sachsenhausen in Germany, and Mauthausen in Nazi-occupied Austria.

Leprich, Kumpf and Tittjung were stripped of their U.S. citizenship for concealing their past as guards at Nazi concentration camps. Kumpf was deported in April to Austria. Leprich and Tittjung, while ordered deported, remain in the United States.