German prosecutors say they’ve charged a 94-year-old former SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp as an accessory to murder.
Prosecutors in Stuttgart said Monday the suspect, a German national born in Serbia whom they didn’t identify by name, was charged as a juvenile because he was 19 at the time of the alleged offenses.
They say he served as a guard at Auschwitz in late 1942 and early 1943 and estimate that 13,335 people were sent to the gas chambers during that time. According to prosecutors, the suspect has said via his lawyer that he wasn’t aware of the background and aims of what was happening, or of details of the killings.
The suspect has been charged on the premise that, as a guard, he helped the camp function.
Last month, a man known as the “Bookkeeper of Auschwitz” died at the age of 96 – shortly before he was due to begin a four-year prison sentence.
Oskar Groening was convicted in 2015 of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews at the concentration camp.
The former SS guard said during his trial that he oversaw the collection of belongings from those killed at Auschwitz or used as slave labour.
He then ensured that valuables and cash were separated to be sent to Berlin.
(AP)
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3 Responses
This is ridiculous. If we believe in judgement from Above then surely let this guy face that rather than the puny sentence he’ll receive in this world. Im yesh din, ein din …
Serbian? The Nazis didn’t like them at all (raising the question of how he escaped being executed by Yugoslavia after the war). If the basis of the case is that he was at the camp, and not a prisoner, and there is no other evidence it isn’t much of a case. There were similar issues right after the war of guards who were “juvenile” (e.g. one of the female guards at Belsen who has the distinction of being the youngest person executed by the British in modern times), but she was infamous for being enthusiastic about killing people. Unless the prosecutor has some real evidence, this case will end up making the prosecutor look silly.
Justice demands that the name of the person charged be publicized.