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Last surviving Auschwitz doctor denies participating in atrocities
DEIDRE BERGER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
FRANKFURT - A former Nazi doctor who admitted to working at Auschwitz has denied that he took part in atrocities.
Prosecutors in Munich began investigating Hans Muench after he was quoted in a recent interview in the German news magazine Der Spiegel as saying that he was not bothered by working at Auschwitz and that gassing Jews spared them from further suffering.
Prosecutors in Frankfurt also have reopened multiple investigations into the wartime actions of Muench, who is alleged to have infected prisoners with malaria. Previous investigations were dropped due to lack of evidence. But the Prosecutor's Office says new evidence has surfaced from files that were found in the archives of the Stasi, the former East German security service.
Willi Dressen, the director of the central office for the investigation of Nazi crimes in Ludwisburg, Germany, said Muench was the only one of 40 defendants cleared of charges during a trial in Krakow, Poland, in 1947. "Many prisoners spoke out in his favor" at that trial, according to Dressen.
Muench is reportedly the last surviving doctor who worked at Auschwitz.
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