The sign also appears at Auschwitz
The sign also appears at AuschwitzThinkstock

A 94-year-old German man was charged Monday with 3,681 counts of aiding and abetting murder in the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II.

 "Like any other person serving at the camp," the accused, "took part in the industrially planned and executed mass extermination of human beings," the indictment filed by prosecutors in Schwerin, Germany reads. 

"The camp's only purpose was murdering people in great numbers."

Stephen Orvenk, a spokesman for the prosecutors in Schwerin, said the defendant was a sergeant in the SS, who served as a paramedic in Auschwitz's SS military hospital between August 15, 1944 and September 14, 1944 when 14 deportation transports arrived.

According to Orvenk, because the defendant contributed to the camp's functioning in his capacity as a doctor, he also bears responsibility for assisting in the acts of mass murder carried out there in 1944. 

Peter-Michael Diestel, the lawyer for the defendant identified only as Hubert Z., said his client did not serve at the death camp voluntarily and that there is no evidence of any "real crimes" committed by his client. 

Furthermore, he claims, prosecutors have only suggested that Z treated SS men who later killed Jewish prisoners. 

Z is one of 30 former Nazi guards that Germany's central Nazi crime investigation unit recommended in 2013 be prosecuted for crimes committed during the Second World War.