Disappearing Act
An SS guard at the infamous Mauthausen camp has
eluded police for 10 years. Now he is the subject Of a
nearby hunt.
JULIE EDGAR SENIOR WRITER
S
ince a popular TV program
featured his picture and sto-
ry two weeks ago, over 50
leads about Nazi death
camp guard Johann Leprich have
poured in.
Many of them are solid, says
Bernie Farber of the Canadian
Jewish Congress, which hired pri-
vate investigator Steve Rambam
in March to find Mr. Leprich af-
ter receiving a tip that he'd been
seen around Windsor.
"I believe it's only a matter of
time before he is picked up," Mr.
Farber said.
Ten years ago, U.S. District
Judge Barbara Hackett stripped
Mr. Leprich, who lived in Clinton
Township, of his American citi-
zenship, the first step in the de-
portation process. But before the
U.S. Immigration and Natural-
ization Service could deport him,
Mr. Leprich fled to Canada.
In the ensuing years, Mr. Lep-
rich, 71, has been regularly cross-
ing the U.S.-Canada border, twice
in the late 1980s to renew his dri-
ver's license in Michigan, said Mr.
Farber.
U.S. authorities notified the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
after Mr. Leprich fled in 1987, but
they "weren't looking very hard.
When we gave the information to
Steve Rambam 10 years later, it
took him three weeks to pull an
entire portfolio on Leprich, even
that he had applied for a Michi-
gan driver's license twice and been
granted it.
"If he had the audacity to show
up at a state authority to pick up
his driver's license, I can only
imagine he drives back [to the
U.S.] freely," Mr. Farber contin-
ued.
Canada formed a war crimes
unit in 1987, but attempts to find
Mr. Leprich for the next four years
came to naught. Inspector Jean
Dube said the unit lost track of
him, and from 1992 to the present
did not actively look for him.
And it is impossible to know
whether Mr. Leprich has spent
much time in Canada, if at all, he
said.
"Th tell you the truth, he's prob-
ably lived more of his time in the
U.S. than in Canada," Inspector
Dube said.
Recent leads haven't yielded
useful information, although the
war crimes unit is continuing the
pursuit, he said.
The former
Detroiter has
been in Windsor
and Michigan.
Inspector Dube fears the pub-
licity surrounding the case could
drive Mr. Leprich further under-
ground, and while he is somewhat
perturbed that the Canadian Jew-
ish Congress called on a private
investigator to track Mr. Leprich,
he said it hasn't impeded the po-
lice investigation.
Mr. Leprich, who was living in
Clinton Township with his wife
Maria and son when he was
nabbed in 1987, admitted he was
a member of the SS Death's Head
Battalion at the Mauthausen con-
centration camp in Austria, where
tens of thousands of Jews per-
ished. He was born in Romania.
He served at the camp from 1943
to 1945.
"At Mauthausen," said the in-
vestigator, Mr. Rambam, "they
killed 125,000 Jews. They were
worked to death, beaten, shot,
crushed under rocks. I was told by
someone who read through his de-
naturalization hearing that the
judge was vibrating with anger.
This is a bad, bad man, an evil
man, someone who the OSI (Of-
fice of Special Investigations)
chose to make one oftheir first cas-
es. We're hoping he'll spend his
73rd birthday on trial in eastern
Europe," Mr. Rambam said. He
believes Mr. Leprich formerly
worked in an auto assembly plant
in Detroit.
"America's Most Wanted,"
which airs on WJBK-TV2, broad-
cast a segment on Mr. Leprich on
Saturday, May 3. Since then, Mr.
Farber said, 55 leads have been
received about Mr. Leprich's
whereabouts.
If Mr. Leprich is found in Cana-
da, Canadian authorities could de-
port him to Europe, or send him
back to the United States for de-
portation proceedings.
Eli Rosenbaum of the U.S. Jus-
tice Department's Office of Spe-
cial Investigations said the U.S. is
assisting Canadian authorities in
finding Mr. Leprich, "and we have
been for quite some time."
Mr. Rambam, a professional
private investigator who tracks
Nazi war criminals essentially
without compensation,, said he's
received some "pretty remarkable
leads," about Mr. Leprich, includ-
ing confirmation of one of his ad-
dresses and confirmation by a
Windsor woman that she knows
him.
He and another investigator he
hired in Detroit spoke to Maria
Leprich, who "had no hesitation
telling us he drives into Canada,"
Mr. Rambam said. "It's been 10
years and they're not worried, or
he wasn't in Canada when she
told us and thought she was be-
ing clever.
T Ast week, Mr. Farber and cler-
gy of several denominations met
with Canadian Justice Minister
Alan Rock to urge that police ag-
gressively pursue suspected Nazi
war criminals. Mr. Farber esti-
mates their number is in the hun-
dreds.
'We have different laws here in
Canada that can very effectively
deal with hate crimes, but with
Nazi war criminals there's a
lengthy history of blindness and
inaction [in Canada].
"It's been since Alan Rock took
over the Justice Ministry (in 1995)
that any action has taken place.
Since then, he has named 12 peo-
ple for deportation, but in 50 years
there's been one deportation. ❑
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