Former Nazi concentration camp guard accused of killing 36 223 people

The German prosecutor’s office charged the 95-year-old resident of Berlin: a man was accused of involvement in the death of more than 35 of thousands of prisoners of the Nazi Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

Фото: Depositphotos

Under the current rules, the name of the defendant is not fully disclosed, in public materials he appears as Hans X, writes with the BBC.

According to investigators, he served in the SS and was a guard in Mauthausen from the middle of 1944-th to the beginning of 1945.

A statement from the Berlin prosecutor’s office stated that Hans H. took part in the massacre of prisoners. He added to the list of former guards of death camps who have recently been charged. At the moment, no comments from the accused or his defense followed.

Half of the 190 thousands of prisoners held in Mauthausen, the largest of the Nazi concentration camps in Austria, were killed. Hans H. is accused of involvement in the demise of the 36 223 of them.

In the camp, located in 20 km from the city of Linz, sent those who were considered enemies of the Nazi government. Prisoners who were used in hard labor died from inhuman working conditions, cold, hunger, lethal injections, were poisoned in gas chambers and shot.

The prosecutor's office claims that the accused was aware of all the methods of extermination and the terrible conditions in which the prisoners were held. A statement from the Berlin Prosecutor’s Office says that Hans H. directly participated in the thousands of murders or contributed to their execution. Now the Berlin court has to decide whether the process will be initiated in this case.

Similar recent trials include the case of 94-year-old Johann Rebogen, who stood trial on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners at the Stutthof camp in what is now northern Poland.

Another court case involves a 94-year-old former SS guard accused of aiding and abetting mass murder at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Auschwitz. The court in Mannheim is currently deciding whether to continue the trial in her case.

Two other 94-year-old former Nazis, Oskar Gröning and Reinhold Hanning, were convicted of crimes they committed at Auschwitz but died before their prison sentences began.

The legal basis for such trials emerged as a result of changes in legal norms following the 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibor camp in occupied Poland. This trial set a precedent for prosecuting former guards for complicity in operations carried out in concentration camps, without having to prove their personal involvement in specific atrocities.

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