Gas chambers and target practice at Mauthausen

Nazi war criminal, expelled from US, is living in UK

Vikram Dodd

Thursday January 20, 2000

The Guardian

www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,237326,00.html

An SS guard at a concentration camp where more than 80,000 people were gassed, worked to death or died after being subjected to experiments is living in Britain and receiving a state pension, the Guardian has learned.

[…]

For three years he was a member of the SS “death’s head” unit at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

It is rare to get documentary evidence of alleged war crimes. But in a document seen by the Guardian, which Mr Schweidler signed during the war, he details how he gunned down two prisoners. He wrote that they were trying to escape in broad daylight in the report he submitted to the SS.

But testimony from another guard, seen by the Guardian, reveals that SS troops would chase prisoners so that guards could use them as target practice.

Yesterday he denied murdering prisoners. […]

[…]