Bruno Karl Blach, a former California resident, was ordered to be kept in custody by a court in Duisburg, West Germany, on Thursday, where he will stand trial for multiple murders committed in Germany and Austria during World War II.
The 69-ycar-old suspect was flown to Dusseldorf from the United States on Wednesday, after agreeing to extradition.
According to Hans-Joachim Reseller, a member of the prosecution team, Blach’s American lawyers said he preferred to face charges in Germany rather than continue his legal battle against deportation.
Blach, a native of Czechoslovakia, joined the Nazi party in 1939 and served as an SS guard at the Dachau and Wiener Neudorf concentration camps.
He was a member of the Notorious SS Totenkopf (Death’s Head) battalion, and is accused of murdering camp inmates between April 2 and 14, 1944, on the way from Neudorf to the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Blach entered the United States in 1956 but never took out citizenship. He lived in La Habra, a suburb of Los Angeles, and had worked as a grocery clerk.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
