A 100-year-old former nazi guard was scheduled to be put on trial by a German court after the man was charged with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder on allegations that he served as a Nazi SS guard at one of the country's concentration camps during World War II.
On Monday, a spokeswoman for the Neuruppin state court said that the suspect's trial was scheduled to begin in early October. However, the name of the 100-year-old man was not released to the public in accordance with German privacy laws.
100-Year-Old Nazi Guard
Authorities have accused the suspect of working at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp between 1942 and 1945. They said the man was an enlisted member of the Nazi Party's paramilitary wing.
Despite his age, officials argued that the suspect was considered to be fit enough to stand his trial. However, they noted that the number of hours per day the court is in session may have to be reduced.
Spokeswoman Iris le Claire said experts conducted a medical evaluation of the suspect that confirmed he was fit to stand trial but only in a limited way. The man's case was handed to the Neuruppin office in 2019 from the special federal prosecutors' office in Ludwigsburg that was responsible for investigating Nazi-era war crimes, the Associated Press reported.
Authorities have provided the 100-year-old suspect with a place to live in the state of Brandenburg outside of Berlin during the trial. The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was constructed in 1936 just north of Berlin, which was the first camp after Adolf Hitler gave full control of the Nazi concentration camp system to the SS.
Thomas Walther, one lawyer involved in the case, said that many of the complainants were just as old as the suspect, who also expected the man to be delivered to justice. A German media reported that the man's case is expected to be one of the last concerning crimes during the era of the Nazis.
The Sachsenhausen camp housed about 200,000 people between 1936 and 1945, which included political opponents, prisoners of war, and persecuted groups. The SS, Nazi Germany's foremost security agency, was responsible for detaining the hundreds of thousands of prisoners, BBC reported.
History of Brutality
Authorities expanded Sachsenhausen to include Soviet prisoners of war during times of conflict, where they were shot by the thousands. Jewish prisoners were also singled out and given particularly harsh treatment compared to other detainees. Many of those who remained alive by 1942 were sent to the Auschwitz death camp.
But in April 1945, the Sachsenhausen was liberated and turned into a brutal camp by the Soviets.
In a similar incident, a 96-year-old woman is scheduled for trial in late September in the northern German town of Itzehoe. The suspect is believed to have worked during the war as a secretary for the SS commandant of the Stutthof concentration camp. Authorities have charged the woman with more than 10,000 counts of accessory to murder earlier this year, USA Today reported.
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