German prosecutors charged a 96-year-old former SS concentration camp guard with accessory to murder Friday for his role in the deaths of over 17,000 prisoners.
The Frankfurt prosecutor’s office did not identify the man, but specified that he was a member of the SS Death’s Head unit, fifth company, and that he was 22 years old when he worked as a guard at Majdanek death camp in Poland between 1943 and 1944, according to AFP News. The unidentified man is alleged to have taken part in operation “Harvest Festival,” (Erntefest) in which SS guards shot and killed at least 17,000 Jews in graves they forced them to dig.
“By being part of a chain of guards and a tower guard, he made a contribution to (the Erntefest) and knowingly and willingly supported the malicious and cruel acts,” a statement from the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office read, according to Haaretz.
“According to the evidence available, the accused knew about the cruelty of the organised mass killings, just like all other members of the SS at the camp. He also knew that these people, facing their fate innocently and defenselessly, were killed for inhuman reasons based on race,” the statement added.
The former SS guard’s trial is one of Germany’s last Holocaust related criminal cases. German officials have been rushing in recent years to prosecute elderly former Nazis before they die, and have taken four such men to court in the last seven years. (Related: 96-Year-Old Auschwitz Bookkeeper Faces Imprisonment For War Crimes)
Since German prosecutors’ 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk, a former death camp guard at Sobibor, officials have been able to prosecute former Nazis under a new burden of proof that simply working at a death camp, even without proof of involvement in specific deaths, is enough to merit prosecution.
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