91-year-old woman charged in 260,000 deaths at Auschwitz

The gates of Auschwitz. — (Image credit: Getty Images)

A 91-year-old woman German prosecutors say worked at the Auschwitz concentration camp has been charged with 260,000 counts of accessory to murder.

A spokesman in the state of Schleswig-Holstein said the woman, who has not been identified, was a former SS member who allegedly served as a radio operator for the camp commandment. He said the woman does not appear to be unfit for trial, and the court should decide sometime next year on whether to proceed with the case.

In July, 94-year-old Oskar Groening, a former Nazi SS sergeant at Auschwitz, was convicted of 300,000 counts of accessory to murder on the reasoning that he helped the death camp function, the BBC reports. He was sentenced to four years in prison. A court in western Germany said on Friday it was waiting to hear if a 93-year-old former Auschwitz guard, identified in media reports as Reinhold Hanning, was fit enough to stand trial. Facing 170,000 charges of accessory to murder, he claims he was not assigned to the area of the camp where mass murders took place.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.