Grocery Clerk From La Habra Ordered to Stand Trial in Death Camp Killing

Bruno Karl Blach, the retired grocery clerk from La Habra who was extradited to Germany earlier this year on war crimes charges, has been ordered to stand trial in a German court on a single count of murder, authorities in that country said Friday.

A three-judge panel from a regional court in Duisburg dismissed two other counts of murder because of insufficient evidence, but found that enough evidence existed to try Blach on the remaining charge of murdering a concentration camp prisoner during World War II, said Presiding Regional Court Judge Hermann Oberscheidt, in an interview Friday.

Prosecutors, however, immediately filed an appeal to have the additional charges reinstated, Oberscheidt said. A higher court should consider that appeal within the next few weeks, he said.

“The trial of Mr. Blach will probably begin sometime in the spring,” Oberscheidt said. In the meantime, Blach, 70, remains in custody in Duisburg, a river port and industrial city about 45 miles north of Cologne in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Prosecutors declined to comment on the case, citing German law that forbids such comment once the court has ordered a defendant to stand trial. Blach’s attorney in Duisburg, Ilona Bruns, was ill Friday and also unavailable for comment.

Blach, a native of Czechoslovakia, joined the Nazi Party in January, 1939, according to U.S. government documents. In 1940, U.S. officials claim, Blach joined the Waffen-SS unit and was assigned to the SS Totenkopf (Death’s Head Battalion) at Dachau in Germany. He served there until the middle of 1943, when he transferred to Wiener-Neudorf, a suburb of Vienna.

In April, 1945, authorities contend, Blach killed concentration camp prisoners during a forced march from a camp in Wiener-Neudorf to a larger camp in Mauthausen, 125 miles to the west.

Aleksy Bialas, a concentration camp survivor now living in Niagara Falls, Canada, testified during Blach’s deportation proceedings that he saw Blach throw an enfeebled prisoner into a ditch and then machine-gun the man to death in 1945.

“I saw him (the victim),” Bialas testified. “I can’t ever forget. The old chap was looking at me when he died.”

Blach was ordered deported in 1987 after immigration officials charged that the former Nazi guard and dog handler had entered the country illegally in 1956. Until deportation proceedings began in 1985, Blach and his wife had lived quietly for many years in a tract home on South Walnut Street in La Habra.

Blach appealed the deportation order, but he waived extradition to Germany when authorities there filed charges against him, saying he wanted to clear himself of the allegations. Blach has disputed the charges, saying that he was a low-ranking guard who had no part in any mistreatment of prisoners.

Blach’s co-defendant in the case, 68-year-old Dominick Gleba of Oberhausen, Germany, was also ordered to stand trial on a single count of murder, Oberscheidt said. Gleba is also accused of murdering prisoners during the death march to Mauthausen. A second count of murder was dismissed, but Oberscheidt said prosecutors are seeking to reinstate that charge as well.