The Swiss Justice Ministry and police said they have given orders to extradite convicted Nazi Gottfried Weise to West Germany.
Weise, 68, a former SS man whose lethal target practice earned him the nickname “William Tell of Auschwitz,” apparently identified himself to medical personnel at a hospital in the resort town of Thun, in the German part of Switzerland.
He had been admitted to the hospital suffering from what has been reported both as a mild stroke and heart trouble.
Weise is believed to have been hiding out in Switzerland since the spring, under the alias Gerhard Sieber. He has been the subject of a massive Interpol manhunt since he fled his home in Wuppertal, West Germany.
Weise was found guilty in January 1988 of having murdered at least five persons in 1944 in his capacity as an SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp.
He appealed his life sentence but the German high court upheld the sentence.
Swiss authorities had taken Weise’s passport from him, but he reportedly obtained false papers and hid with the help of a neo-Nazi network.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
