[JURIST] A German court said Monday that a 93-year-old man dubbed the “accountant of Auschwitz” will stand trial on charges that he was an accessory to the killing of 300,000 people. Oskar Groening, an SS guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp, claims he viewed many atrocities at the facility but never participated in the mass executions. Groening faces charges [JURIST report] of supporting the Nazi efforts economically and serving as an accessory to the mass killings at the camp by processing the belongings of the victims. The trial will begin in April [AP report] and will include many Holocaust survivors and victims’ families represented as co-plaintiffs throughout the proceedings.

Last month the world marked the seventieth anniversary [JURIST report] of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp. Prosecutors are in a race against time to find and prosecute the few remaining living Nazi war criminals who have escaped justice. In December a German court threw out a case [JURIST report] against a former SS soldier who was accused of being involved in the largest massacre in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. In 2013 German prosecutors brought a 92-year-old former Nazi to trial [JURIST report]. However, his case was dropped [JURIST report] in January due to too many gaps in the evidence. In June 2013 Hungarian prosecutors charged [JURIST report] Laszlo Csatary, a 98-year-old Hungarian man, with the unlawful execution and torture of people in connection with the Holocaust. Csatary died [JURIST report] in August 2013 while awaiting trial.