Former SS guard, 96, to stand trial in connection with 17 000 deaths

Watchtowers and the barbed wire fence of the former Nazi death camp Majdanek are seen outside the city of Lublin in eastern Poland. File picture: Czarek Sokolowski/AP

Watchtowers and the barbed wire fence of the former Nazi death camp Majdanek are seen outside the city of Lublin in eastern Poland. File picture: Czarek Sokolowski/AP

Published Oct 20, 2017

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Frankfurt - German prosecutors on Friday charged a 96-year-old

former SS guard at a Nazi death camp of complicity in the murder of

prisoners in one of the last cases dating back to the Third Reich.

The man, who now lives in Frankfurt, was 22 years old when he worked

at the Lublin-Majdanek camp in occupied Poland between August 1943

and January 1944.

The Frankfurt prosecutor's office said that like all other SS members

of the camp, which formed a part of the Nazi death machine, he must

have known about the organized mass killing that took place.

Skeletons people tortured to death and burned lie near ovens of the crematorium operated by the Nazis in Lublin, Poland. Picture: Sovfoto via AP

As a guard, he is alleged to have been involved in the mass shooting

of at least 17 000 Jews in November 1943.

Prisoner's shoes on display at barrack 52 in the State Museum at Majdanek, former Nazi German Concentration Camp, in Lublin. Handout picture: MAJDANEK STATE MUSEUM

Public prosecutor Nadja Niesen told dpa that despite his age the man

was fit to stand trial.

The Frankfurt district court now has to decide whether to proceed

with the case.

dpa

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