Germany probing 100-year-old suspected Nazi POW camp guard

Prosecutors allege suspect took part in executions between December 1943 and September 1944 at a camp that mostly held Soviet prisoners

BERLIN, Germany — German prosecutors are investigating a 100-year-old man on suspicion that he served as a Nazi camp guard and took part in executions in the final years of World War II.

Authorities in the western city of Dortmund allege the crimes took place between December 1943 and September 1944, prosecutor Andreas Brendel told AFP Monday, confirming a Bild daily report.

The man is said to have served at a prisoner of war camp in Hemer, western Germany, which held at least 100,000 inmates, mostly from the Soviet Union. Thousands died at the camp.

Several trials of Nazi camp staff have been held in recent years, spurred by the 2011 conviction of former Sobibor death camp guard John Demjanjuk, despite no proof he had directly killed anyone.

However, time is running out, 80 years after the end of the war.

Josef Schuetz, a former guard sentenced in June 2022 to five years in prison, died less than a year later at the age of 102.

In April, an alleged former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin died before he could face court to answer charges of being complicit in the murder of more than 3,300 people.