A 95-year old man has been charged with more than 36,000 counts of being an accessory to murder, due to his alleged role as an SS guard at Mauthausen concentration camp from 1944-1945.
In a statement from Martin Steltner of the Berlin Prosecutor’s Office, the accused, identified as Hans H for legal reasons, is alleged to have "known about the various methods of killing as well as the disastrous living conditions of the imprisoned people”.
He is also said to have "been aware that a large number of people were killed with these methods and that the victims could have only been killed with such regularity if they were being guarded by people such as himself.”
Hans H served as an SS Rottenfuhrer, a rank roughly equivalent to corporal, from late 1944 onwards.
Around 190,000 people, including many thousands of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war, were held at Mauthausen, the largest concentration camp in Austria.
Approximately 90,000 of those were killed by various means, including gassing, lethal injection, shootings, starvation or exposure. At least 36,223 were killed during the time Hans H is said to have served as an SS guard.
The SS evacuated Mauthausen in early May 1945, just prior to its liberation by the US Army. Hans H is accused of serving both in the outer perimeter of the camp and inside, as well as guarding prisoner work details at a nearby quarry.
The rock quarry at Mauthausen was at the base of a climb known as the "Stairs of Death". Exhausted and malnourished prisoners were often forced to run up the 186 stairs, carry roughly-hewn blocks of stone often weighing as much as 50 kilograms.
Those who survived were often placed in rows at the edge of a cliff known as "The Parachutists Wall". At gunpoint, each prisoner would have the option of being shot or pushing the prisoner in front of him off the cliff.
Trials held in Germany over the last decade have advanced the legal view that Nazi camp guards can be charged as accessories to murder even without direct evidence of them actively taking part in killings.
The Berlin prosecutor’s office said it had determined that Hans H is able to stand trial.
A court will now review the charges and independently determine whether the accused is fit to be tried.
