John Demjanjuk’s conviction set a precedent under which hundreds of suspects could be charged, say prosecutors

Prosecutors in Germany have reopened hundreds of investigations of former Nazi death camp guards and others who might now be charged under a precedent set by the conviction of John Demjanjuk, a guard at Sobibor camp in Poland in 1943.

Given the advanced age of the suspects – the youngest is in his 80s – the head of the German prosecutors’ office dedicated to investigating Nazi war crimes said authorities would not wait for the Demjanjuk appeal process to finish. “We don’t want to wait too long, so we’ve already begun our investigations,” Kurt Schrimm said.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s chief Nazi-hunter, Efraim Zuroff, said he would launch a campaign in the next two months – a successor to his Operation Last Chance – to track down the remaining war criminals.

He added that the Demjanjuk conviction had opened the door to prosecutions that were never thought possible. “It could be a very interesting final chapter,” he said by telephone from Jerusalem. “This has tremendous implications, even at this late date.”

…Schrimm said his office was poring over its files to see if others fit into the same category as Demjanjuk. He could not give an exact figure, but said there were probably “less than 1,000” possible suspects living in Germany and elsewhere who could face prosecution. “We have to check everything – from the people who we were aware of in camps like Sobibor … or also in the Einsatzgruppen,” he said, referring to the death squads responsible for mass killings, particularly early in the war before the camps were established.

I hate f***ing Nazis.