A 93-year-old man understood to be a former guard at the Auschwitz extermination camp has been arrested by German authorities.
According to media reports, Hans Lipschis was arrested in Aalen, in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners.
Stuttgart prosecutors are preparing the indictment against him. Lipschis told the authorities that he worked as a cook at the camp, situated in Poland, but prosecutors say there is evidence to suggest he had other responsibilities.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office told AFP news agency: "He took on supervisory duties although he did not only work as a guard.
"We will try to determine concretely when and what he did at Auschwitz."
Lipschis was last month positioned at number four on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most wanted Nazis list.
The centre says he served in the SS Death's Head Battalion at the camp between 1941 and 1945, during which time "he participated in the mass murder and persecution of innocent civilians, primarily Jews".
