Nazi guard, 95, now charged over death of 36,000
A 95-YEAR-old man has been charged with accessory to murder as an SS guard at a Nazi camp while 36,000 people died.
The German, named only as Hans H, served at Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria between 1944 and 1945.
In all 95,000 died at the camp, at least 36,223 while he was there.
Prosecutors said: “The killings were mostly carried out through gassing, but also through ‘death bath actions’, injections and shootings, as well as through starvation and freezing.”
Hans H allegedly guarded inmates at the camp, about 20km from the Austrian city of Linz, and also during forced marches.
He was “aware of all the killing methods as well as disastrous living conditions”, added accusers.
His involvement showed he wanted to “support or at least help make easier the many thousands of deaths carried out by the main perpetrator”, they added.
Some 14,000 Jews were killed at Mauthausen, with many Soviet prisoners of war, Spanish people who had fought against General Franco and scores of others.
A court must now review the charges and determine if Hans H is fit to stand trial under new laws allowing the prosecution of people involved in the Nazi “machinery of death” – even if they did not personally kill anyone.
Germany has stepped up prosecutions of lower-ranking war criminals since the 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk, a guard at Sobibor death camp.
His case set a new precedent that no proof of a specific crime was needed to convict a defendant.