In 1951, the sentinel who guarded the Third Reich’s most notorious death camp arrived in the United States, amiable and voice thick with a central European accent.

After breezing through immigration, he settled into a small rowhouse near Pennypack Park in Philadelphia, where neighbours knew him as “Hans”. He found work as a tool and die maker at a local engineering company in nearby Fort Washington, where he would work for 32 years. He raised three children, retired at 66 and settled into a drama-free existence that, he says, didn’t even involve one traffic ticket.

Whatever he is — killer or hapless fool who barely knew a thing, as he claims — Johann Breyer clearly succeeded in putting a great deal of time and space between himself and the events of 1944.

Now, across all that time and space, the past has reached out to claim him.