Former SS sergeant charged with 3,681 counts of accessory to murder in Nazi extermination camp

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

German prosecutors have charged a 94-year-old man with 3,681 counts of accessory to murder over allegations he served in the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp.

Stefan Urbanek, a spokesman for prosecutors in Schwerin, the capital of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, said on Monday that the suspect was an SS sergeant who served as a medic in an SS hospital in Auschwitz. Urbanek said the man helped the extermination camp to function and could thus be charged as an accessory to the 1944 killings.

Urbanek would not release the suspect’s name, in line with privacy laws.

The man is one of 30 former Auschwitz suspects against whom federal investigators recommended in 2013 that state prosecutors pursue charges under a new precedent in German law.

The suspect’s lawyer, Peter-Michael Diestel, told the Bild newspaper that there was no evidence of any “concrete criminal act” by his client.