A former Nazi guard was charged for the murders of Jews as an accessory. Many Jews were gassed or killed by several means, especially during the last days of the Third Reich. He is 100 years old.
Nazi Germany employed concentration camps to imprison Jews and later on became charnel houses where numerous prisoners were executed. Many prisoners were watched by guards who made sure any executions went on smoothly.
Former Nazi Guard charged for murder
In Berlin, an ex-Nazi guard was charged with 3,518 counts for helping to murder the prisoners in one of the concentration camps.
He was one of many guards who served in the SS guard, responsible for keeping prisoners in line, reported the Epoch Times.
He was placed in one of these death camps outside Berlin.
The ex-guard was supposed to be stationed at the Sachsenhausen camp from 1942 to 1945, part of the Nazi party's paramilitary unit, identified by Cyrill Klement, who investigated the 100-year-old man, on behalf of the Neuruppin prosecutors' office.
The man's identity was not published as it should be kept secret under privacy laws in Germany. Though the man is a century old, authorities have found him fit to sit for trial. But the court has to limit the trial time as an accommodation for the man's age. This was according to the report given to the Associated Press.
This case was given to the Neuruppin office in 2019 through the special federal prosecutors' office in Ludwigsburg. It is tasked with investigating crimes committed by the former SS guard, said Klement.
Several ex-Nazi's prosecuted as well.
In the northern town of Itzehoe, their prosecutors mentioned another accessory to murder charges against a 95-year-old woman. She used to be the secretary of the SS commandant in the Stutthof concentration camp.
According to Klement, filing the case is the legal reasons that support the claim against the Sachsenhausen camp. These developments dictate that any individual proven to have assisted in any Nazi concentration camp can be prosecuted as accessories to murder.
Efraim Zuroff, a Nazi hunter, said the two recent cases show as reminders of anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia as byproducts of that era.
He added their age is no excuse to exempt them from their action; they should not live peaceful lives denied in their victims.
They were established as a new legal precedent with the conviction of former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk, who also served in the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. The defendant never admitted to the charges until his death.
Next, another federal court kept the 2015 conviction of former Auschwitz guard Oskar Groening using the same legal precedent. Until the new legal ruling, German courts needed more to convict them who are hard to identify with their crimes. Most of the time, prosecutors will have a hard time in their jobs of convicting.
Klement cited the Demjanjuk and Groening decisions determined these people were part of the death camp. They are determined as accessories to lead to a murder conviction.
To start the trial, the Neuruppin court in the northwest of Oranienburg, where the Sachsenhausen has several tasks to check the case, and if the defendant is fit, the date for the trial is next.
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