Nazi Most Wanted: SS-Death’s Head Camp Guards Added on Holocaust Memorial Day

As Israel commemorates Holocaust Memorial Day, a Jewish human rights organization, committed to bring to justice Nazi war criminals, has added two names to its most wanted list.

Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre, named after the famous Nazi-hunter, has published its annual report on the investigation and prosecution of Nazi criminals around the world.

The names of SS-Death's Head (Totenkopf) division camp guards Hans Lipschis and Theodor Szehinskyj have been included in the related top 10 of most wanted Nazis.

Lipschis, 94, is believed to be responsible of mass murder and other war crimes as he served as a guard at Auschwitz-Birkenanu concentration camps during the war.

He fled to the US in the '50s but was captured and extradited to Germany about 30 years later. His role at Auschwitz-Birkenanu is currently under investigation by German authorities.

It has been estimated that 1.5m Jews were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Nazis. Every year, thousands of youths held a silent 3-km march starting from Auschwitz's main gate with its notorious Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes You Free) inscription, as part of Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations.

Ukranian-born Szehinskyj, 89, served at Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen and the Warsaw concentration camps.

After the war, he also fled to the US, from where he was ordered to be deported in 2003. However no country has been willing to take him.

Szehinskyj and Lipschis' names replaced those of Klaas Faber and Karoly Zentai.

Faber died in Germany aged 90 in May 2012, while Zentai, 89, won a legal battle against extradition from Australia - where he lives - to Hungary - where he is wanted on war crime charges - in August last year.

Topping the list is Alois Brunner, who is accused of being an aide for Adolf Eichmann and the responsible for the deportation of thousands of Jews. Brunner, 101 if still alive, was last seen in Damascus, Syria in the '90s.

"During the past twelve years, at least ninety-nine convictions against Nazi war criminals have been obtained, at least eighty-nine new indictments have been filed, and well over three thousand new investigations have been initiated," said the author of the report, Efraim Zuroff.

"Despite the somewhat prevalent assumption that it is too late to bring Nazi murderers to justice, the figures clearly prove otherwise, and we are trying to ensure that at least several of these criminals will to be brought to trial during the coming years."

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked worldwide on Januar 27, the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Israel Holocaust Memorial Day coincides with date of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising instead.