Germany looking to prosecute over a dozen more Nazi war criminals
Thomas Will, head of the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, stands among the office’s files in Ludwigsburg, Germany, Feb. 18, 2021. Courtesy of Getty
BERLIN (JTA) – As Germany prepares to put a 100-year-old man on trial for Nazi war crimes, public prosecutors in several German states have announced that they are investigating more than a dozen other suspects.
Most of the cases involve concentration camp guards who may be charged as accessories to murder following the precedent-setting conviction of Ivan Demjanjuk in Munich in 2011. Demjanjuk was found guilty as an accessory in the murders of nearly 30,000 Jews in the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
According to German news reports, trials are already set to begin this fall in two cases: A 96-year-old woman will appear before the Itzehoe Regional Court in Schleswig-Holstein, and the 100-year-old man is due to stand trial at the Neuruppin Regional Court in the former East German state of Brandenburg.
Meanwhile, nine investigations are ongoing and there are six more preliminary probes, Thomas Will, head of the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes based in Ludwigsburg, told Spiegel magazine. There is no statute of limitations for murder and accessory to murder.
Thomas Walther, an attorney who represented co-plaintiffs in the Demjanjuk trial and reportedly will do the same in this trial, said in a recent interview with the Tagesspiegel newspaper that his clients, Holocaust survivors, are just as old as the accused and have never given up hope for justice.
After the indictment of the 100-year-old man was handed down earlier this year, the vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, Christoph Heubner, told RBB broadcast news that “for the aged survivors … this trial is also an important example that justice knows no expiration date and that the prosecution of SS perpetrators must not come to an end despite their old age.”
The defendant, whose name has not been released to the public, was found medically fit to stand trial for up to 2 ½ hours per day, according to the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. He is accused of being a knowing and willing accessory in 3,518 murders at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp, outside Berlin, where he reportedly was a guard from 1942 to 1945. He allegedly was involved in the shooting of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942 and assisted in the murder of other prisoners with the poison gas Zyklon B.
At least one other case involves a former guard at the same camp. Investigators have not yet determined whether he is healthy enough to stand trial.
—
The post Germany looking to prosecute over a dozen more Nazi war criminals appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
