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BERLIN — In a series of home raids, Germany has arrested three men — aged 88, 92 and 94 — suspected of being former SS guards at the Auschwitz death camp.

The three elderly men underwent medical tests and then faced a judge who confirmed their fitness to be detained in a prison hospital, prosecutors said in a statement Thursday.

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The men were suspected of having served as Auschwitz SS guards from 1942 to 1944 and of having participated in murders at the Nazis’ extermination camp in occupied Poland, where more than 1 million people were killed in the Second World War.

The three men lived in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg, said prosecutors in the city of Stuttgart.

The oldest of the group is thought to be Hans Koenig, the Daily Mirror reported, who was known as a “bruiser” in Auschwitz – a guard said to have engaged in cruelty for its own sake.

Last year he told a German paper he was “happy to be part of it”.