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German prosecutors on Friday accused a 95-year-old man of more than 36,000 counts of complicity in murder during his presumed guard of the Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War.
The charges against the defendants, identified only by Hans H., relate to atrocities committed in the Mauthausen camp in Austria, said the Berlin prosecutor's office in a statement.
Hans H. allegedly belonged to the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann (Death & # 39; s Head battalion) between the summer of 1944 and the spring of 1945 in Mauthausen, part of the extensive network of Nazi concentration camps where prisoners were required to imposed labour.
Prosecutors argue that by working as a guardian on the site, the accused contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of prisoners.
At least 36,223 prisoners died during his stay at the camp. The guards took part in gas killings, lethal injections, shots and other means, while many other prisoners died of starvation or frostbite, prosecutors said.
"The accused would have been aware of all methods of killing and the disastrous living conditions of the detainees," said their statement.
"It is thought that he knew that these methods of murder were used against a large number of people and that they could only be killed in this way, with this regularity, if the victims were kept by people like him."
A total of 200,000 people were detained in Mauthausen, half of whom died before the camp was liberated by US troops in May 1945.
A Berlin court now has to decide whether the case against Hans H. can be pursued.
Germany has been fighting to have SS survivors tried, after the legal basis for prosecuting former Nazis changed in 2011 with the historic conviction of former guard John Demjanjuk.
He was convicted for rusting the Nazi killing machine at Sobibor camp in occupied Poland, rather than for murders or atrocities that were personally linked to him.
German courts later sentenced Oskar Groening, an accountant at Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard at the same camp, for complicity in mass murder.
Both men were convicted at age 94 but died before being imprisoned.
Earlier this month, a former Nazi concentration camp guard, Johann Rehbogen, was tried in Muenster (west of the country), accused of complicity in large-scale killings at Stutthof camp in occupied Poland.
Mauthausen was part of the vast network of Nazi concentration camps where detainees were forced to work
Prosecutors said the guards had been involved in gas killings, lethal injections, shots and other means, while many other prisoners had died of starvation or frostbite.
A historic conviction changed the legal basis for prosecutions after the imprisonment of a former guardian, who was simply a cog in the Nazi killing machine – not for atrocities that were personally related to him.
