BERLIN (Reuters) – German prosecutors have charged a 100-year-old German man with being an accessory to 3,518 murders committed while he was allegedly a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during the latter half of World War Two.
According to NDR public television, the suspect, who today lives in the northeastern state of Brandenburg, is accused of making a “material and intentional” contribution to the killings at the camp, where 100,000 died.
In recent years, prosecutors have brought charges against several elderly former concentration camp overseers, seizing the last opportunity to secure justice for the millions who perished in Nazi Germany’s many camps, including Jews, gypsies, gays and political prisoners.
Last year, 93-year-old Bruno D. was convicted of 5,230 counts of being an accessory to murder, while prosecutors last week charged 95-year-old Irmgard F., secretary of the camp at Stutthof, of being an accessory to 10,000 murders.
NDR reported that the man was alleged to have worked at Sachsenhausen between 1942 and 1945.
The camp, set up near Berlin in 1936, was notorious for early experiments in the killing of inmates by gas in what became a trial run for the murders of millions in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Prosecutors and court officials in Neuruppin, where the charges were brought, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
