A 98-year-old German man has been charged with complicity in murder for his role as a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during the period from 1943 to 1945, according to prosecutors who made the announcement on Friday.
The accused, a German citizen residing in Main-Kinzig county near Frankfurt, is alleged to have been part of the SS guard detail that “supported the cruel and malicious killing of thousands of prisoners,” as stated by prosecutors in Giessen. The suspect’s identity has not been disclosed.
He is facing charges related to over 3,300 counts of complicity in murder between July 1943 and February 1945. The indictment has been submitted to the state court in Hanau, which will decide whether the case should proceed to trial. If the trial proceeds, the accused will be tried under juvenile law, taking into account his age at the time of the alleged crimes.
Prosecutors noted that a psychiatric expert’s report from October of the previous year concluded that the suspect is fit to stand trial, at least to a limited extent.
In recent years, German prosecutors have pursued several cases based on a legal precedent that allows individuals who played a role in the functioning of a Nazi camp to be prosecuted for complicity in the murders that occurred there, even without direct evidence of their involvement in specific killings.
Importantly, charges of murder and complicity in murder do not have a statute of limitations under German law.
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Sachsenhausen, located just north of Berlin, held more than 200,000 people from 1936 to 1945. Many suffered and died from starvation, diseases, forced labor, and other causes, as well as through medical experiments and systematic SS extermination operations, including shootings, hangings, and gassing. The exact number of those killed varies, with some estimates exceeding 100,000, though scholars suggest figures of 40,000 to 50,000 are likely more accurate.
