German prosecutors have opened an investigation into a 100-year-old man suspected of serving as a Nazi camp guard and taking part in executions during the final years of World War II, AFP reported on Monday.
Authorities in Dortmund allege the crimes occurred between December 1943 and September 1944. Prosecutor Andreas Brendel confirmed the probe to AFP, following a report in Bild.
The man is said to have served at a prisoner of war camp in Hemer, western Germany, which held at least 100,000 inmates, mostly from the Soviet Union. Thousands died at the camp.
Germany’s crackdown on Nazi war criminals began following the 2011 Munich trial of John Demjanjuk, a Nazi war criminal charged with assisting in the murder of 28,060 people at the Sobibor death camp and sentenced to five years. He died in 2012.
In 2020, 93-year-old Stutthof camp guard Bruno Dey was convicted of 5,232 counts of accessory to murder in Hamburg state court, equal to the number of people believed to have been killed at Stutthof during his service there in 1944 and 1945.
In 2021, German prosecutors charged a 100-year-old man who allegedly served as a Nazi concentration camp guard at Sachsenhausen where more than 100,000 people were killed.
Some of those convicted of Nazi-era war crimes never served their sentences as they passed away before being jailed.
In addition, some cases have been dropped because the accused died or were physically unable to stand trial.
In June of 2024, a court in Hanau declined to open proceedings against a 99-year-old alleged former guard at the Sachsenhausen Nazi camp, deeming the suspect unfit to stand trial.
In April, an alleged former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin died before facing trial on charges of complicity in the murder of more than 3,300 people.