95-year-old charged as accessory to 36,000 deaths at Nazi concentration camp

Prosecutors in Germany reportedly charged a 95-year-old alleged former guard at a Nazi death camp with more than 36,000 counts of accessory to murder.

CBS News reports that Hans Werner H., whose last name was not publicly released by police, was charged Friday and accused of serving as a guard at the Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria from 1944-1945.

{mosads}More than 95,000 people, including 14,000 Jews, are believed to have been executed at the Mauthausen camp alone, some of the millions who died during the years of the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe. The 95-year-old suspect was not charged with any specific killings related to the camp’s operation.

“With his service as a guard he aided or at least made easier the killing of many thousands of inmates,” Berlin prosecutor Martin Steltner told CBS News.

Hans Werner was accused in the court filings of having “been aware that a large number of people were killed … and that the victims could have only been killed with such regularity if they were being guarded by people such as himself.”

Roughly the equivalent of a corporal during the war according to CBS, the suspect is alleged to have served as a guard both inside and outside the camp, as well as having run prisoner details at a nearby quarry.

His indictment in Germany comes several months after the U.S. deported Jakiw Palij, a 95-year-old man who was believed to be the last suspect of Nazi war crimes living in the U.S.

“To protect the promise of freedom for Holocaust survivors and their families, President Trump prioritized the removal of Palij,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the time.