Germany to prosecute 96-year-old former Nazi death camp guard
Berlin — On Friday, German prosecutors charged a 96-year-old former SS guard at a Nazi death camp with complicity in the murder of detainees, in one of the last criminal cases linked to the Holocaust. The man, who was not named, was 22 years old when he worked at the extermination camp Majdanek in occupied Poland between August 1943 and January 1944. He was a member of the fifth company of the SS Death’s Head unit, which was regularly deployed as guards and tasked with monitoring and maintaining order at the camp. "According to available information, the accused, as well as other SS members of the camp, knew about the cruelty of the organised mass killings," said prosecutors in Frankfurt. "He should have known that the people were killed out of racist and despicable motives," they added. The former guard, who now lives in Frankfurt, was allegedly involved in the so-called Operation Harvest Festival, in which at least 17,000 Jews were shot in November 1943 while standing in graves th...
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