July 3

USA//MICHIGAN:

Neighbor's Nazi past shocks residents


CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Michigan (AP) -- Capper Street, with its neat, ranch-style
homes, manicured lawns and flower-accented porches, is a slice of American
suburbia. Folks chat while picking up the morning paper and pay
occasional visits to each other.

The peaceful setting about 25 miles from Detroit makes it all the more
shocking for neighbors that one of their own, a 77-year-old who gave
tomatoes from his garden as gifts, is accused of working as a
concentration camp guard in German-occupied Austria during World War II.

Federal officials, acting on a tip, found Johann Leprich hiding in a secret
compartment beneath the stairs of his home Tuesday night, about 16 years
after he was stripped of his American citizenship for not revealing that
he had been an armed SS guard at the Mauthausen concentration camp. He
faces deportation and possible prosecution.

"This arrest makes clear that those who participated in the atrocities of
the Holocaust will not escape the determined reach of U.S. law
enforcement," Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a statement.

Neighbors on Thursday described Leprich as kind, gentle and a "good man,"
and said they find it hard to believe he had any hand in war crimes.

"The big guys, they escaped (from Germany) under a different name and
went to South America," said Katherine Sendek, a close friend of
Leprich's wife, referring to some senior Nazis.

Mary Bombassbi, who lives a few houses down, said Leprich should be
allowed to explain what he did during the war.

"What's the point in deporting him. He's ... probably not going to live
much longer," she said.

Charles Rosenzveig, executive director of the Holocaust Memorial Center
in West Bloomfield Township, describes Leprich's capture and likely
deportation as justice done. About 120,000 people died at Mauthausen
between 1938 and 1945, either of starvation, disease or the hardship of
slave labor at a nearby quarry.

Rosenzveig disputed Leprich's reported claim that he became a guard at the
camp against his will.

"The historical record showed that you were not forced to become guards," he
said. Becoming a guard "was almost a voluntary decision because they felt
that they don't have to go to the army and they will have food and will
be able to rule over others."

Leprich's application for U.S. citizenship said he served in the
Hungarian army during the war but did not mention Mauthausen. After
officials learned he was a guard there, Leprich reportedly acknowledged
lying on the application.

Leprich worked in a machine shop after he arrived in the United States in
1952. After officials learned about his past, he fled to Canada in 1987
before deportation proceedings were complete, said U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement spokesman Greg Palmore.

Leprich was featured on "America's Most Wanted" in 1997, but officials
did not know where he had been living in recent years.

Immigration officials say that the next step for Leprich is a bond
hearing in 7 to 10 days and then a deportation hearing. It is unclear to
where he would be deported.

(source: Associated Press)