Prosecution: Crown charges murder of 94-year-old man in Nova Scotia federal lawsuit

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WIn several hundred cases, a former guardian of the Stutthof concentration camp, near Gdansk, aged 94, has been responsible to the district court of Münster since Tuesday. At the beginning of the trial, the prosecutor's office accused the man from Borken District of having supported the Nazi crimes perpetrated against Stutthof concentration camp inmates as a member of the local guards.

In addition, according to a court spokesman, the plaintiff filed a request for evidence that the court should obtain a photo of the former concentration camp on the spot. This request was followed by other auxiliary plaintiffs and by the defense of this 94-year-old man. In total, 17 co-applicants are involved in the process.

On the outskirts of the first day of the trial, Dortmund district prosecutor Andreas Brendel said that in the Stutthof camp, prisoners had been gbaded and bayonet killed, starving and chilled. There is "hardly a mortal species that did not exist in Stutthof". Brendel heads the central office of North Rhine-Westphalia in charge of handling Nazi mbad crimes.

This 94-year-old former SS man was reported to have heard from 1942 to 1944 about the guards at the Stutthof concentration camp. According to the indictment, he allegedly was responsible for camp supervision as well as escorting and monitoring orders for work outside the camp.

A maximum of two hours can be negotiated with the defendant of advanced age by trial day. Until now, the criminal court set the trial date until mid-February.

Initially, the trial in Münster was to be directed against two defendants. The court against the other accused for comparable allegations, but separated the court because the bargaining power of 93 years of Wuppertal is not resolved. The question of whether a trial against the second accused can take place is currently uncertain.

The director of the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Robert Rozett, said from the perspective of the main audience on Westdeutscher Rundfunk that it was a process " of paramount importance, especially because there will be virtually no procedure in the future ". Many Jews in Israel agree that the 94-year-old, despite his advanced age, must shoulder his responsibilities.

"Even in the concentration camp, there was no pity," says Rozett. "Now we hope that the man is telling the truth to at least contribute to the preparation."

More than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, the charges of former members of the SS have recently been the subject of several criminal cases before the German courts because of the National Socialist mbad crimes committed in the camps. concentration and extermination. The reason is a new legal opinion that prevailed in the German judicial system. As a result, support activities for concentration camp guards can be categorized as aiding and abetting murder.

Suspects should now also face charges that would have served as guards or, as part of the camp administration, would have organized killings in an organizational manner. In the past, only suspects who participated directly in the killing of concentration camp inmates were in court. Murders and thus help and encouragement of murder are not subject to prescription in German law.