BERLIN — German officials said that a 98-year-old has been charged with aiding and abetting the murder of more than 3,300 people during the Holocaust.
The man, who was a guard at the Nazis’ Sachsenhausen concentration camp, has been accused of having “supported the cruel and malicious killing of thousands of prisoners as a member of the SS guard detail,” prosecutors said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press.
He has been charged with more than 3,300 counts of accessory to murder between July 1943 and February 1945, the AP reported.
The man’s name has not been released due to German privacy laws, CNN reported.
The man’s charges were filed in a state court in Hanau. According to the AP, the state court in Hanau now has to decide if it will go to trial. If the case does go to trial, the man will be tried under juvenile law because of his age at the time when the alleged crimes occurred.
A psychiatric assessment of the suspect was conducted last October and found that he is fit to stand trial, according to CNN. However, there will be certain limits, according to the statement.
Last year, another former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp was sentenced to five years in prison, according to CNN. He was 101. He was convicted of aiding and abetting the murder of 3,518 people during the Holocaust.
More than 200,000 people were held at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp between 1936 and 1945, according to the AP. Thousands died of starvation, disease, forced labor and other causes. People also died from medical experiments and “systematic SS extermination operations” such as shootings, gassing and hangings. The exact number of the deceased victims varies.
