100-year-old accused of once being a Nazi guard to stand trial in Germany

(Image credit: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

published 2 August 2021

Prosecutors in Germany said on Monday that a 100-year-old man accused of being a Nazi concentration camp guard is fit to stand trial in October.

The man, whose name has not been released, allegedly served as a guard at the Sachsenhausen camp near Berlin, with prosecutors accusing him of being complicit in the murders of 3,518 prisoners between 1942 and 1945. He went through a medical assessment and it was determined that he is fit to spend two-and-a-half hours a day inside a courtroom for his trial.

An estimated 200,000 people were held at Sachsenhausen from 1936 to 1945, BBC News reports, and tens of thousands died from forced labor, hunger, and disease or by execution. There aren't many former guards who are still living, but now there is legal precedent that prosecutors do not need evidence of direct involvement in murders at concentration camps to bring someone to trial. In March, a 96-year-old accused of being a Nazi guard was found unfit to stand trial.

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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.

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