June 17, 2016 dpa-international.com
BACKGROUND Major cases for Germany's Nazi hunters, seven decades on

Berlin (dpa) - The work of prosecutors trying to secure convictions for those involved in Adolf Hitler's World War II-era murder machine gets more difficult every year as the suspects grow increasingly frail.

Germany has repeatedly come under fire for letting high-ranking Nazis and members of the SS escape justice as their numbers dwindle. However, there have also been a number of landmark convictions in recent years.

Here is an overview of five major cases - some successful, some unsuccessful - during the last decade:

OSKAR GROENING: The conviction last year of the so-called Bookkeeper of Auschwitz on at least 300,000 counts of accessory to murder charges reignited a debate in Germany about prosecuting the few remaining war criminals from the Nazi era.

JOHN DEMJANJUK: John Demjanjuk was found guilty in 2011 of being an accessory to the murder of more than 28,000 Jews while he was a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp, in occupied Poland. The conviction set a legal precedent and marked a turning point in how German prosecutors deal with Nazi war crimes.

HANS LIPSCHIS: Lithuania-born Hans Lipschis was deemed unfit to stand trial in 2014 on charges of accessory to the murder of 10,500 people at Auschwitz in the final years of the war. A court in Ellwangen found that the then-94-year-old would be unable to follow the proceedings due to his worsening dementia.

SAMUEL KUNZ: This former death camp guard - then the world's third-most-wanted Nazi suspect - died in 2010 before he could stand trial for murdering 10 Jews and participating in the murder of 430,000 others. Kunz was a minor when he worked at the Belzec death camp in Poland.

HEINRICH BOERE: Boere was convicted in 2010 on three counts of murder. He admitted to killing three civilians as part of a hit squad made up of Dutch SS volunteers who carried out reprisal killings of countrymen considered to be anti-Nazi. He died in 2010 in a prison hospital while serving out a life sentence.

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