BERLIN (JTA) — A man living in Bavaria could be charged with participating in the shooting of Jewish prisoners in the slave labor camp Treblinka I during World War II.
According to Der Spiegel magazine, state prosecutors in Munich will decide soon whether to bring charges against a man identified as Alex N. for his alleged activities as a Nazi SS guard. Born in 1917 in Ukraine and living in the city of Landshut since the end of the war, Alex N. was granted German citizenship in 1991.
Investigators at the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwisburg provided information leading to the current investigation. The labor camp was located near the death camp, Treblinka II, in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Alex N., who reportedly trained at the same Nazi SS facility, Trawniki, as accused war criminal John Demjanjuk, offered testimony at the Demjanjuk trial in Munich last February. Demjanjuk is charged as an accessory to the murders of 27,900 people at the Sobibor death camp.
Alex N. reportedly has bragged over the years about having shot Jews.
A few weeks ago, Germany filed charges against another witness in the Demjanjuk trial — Samuel Kunz, 90, the No. 3 man on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most-wanted Nazis. Kunz was charged with helping to murder 430,000 Jews in the Belzec concentration camp in occupied Poland.
Two men under investigation died recently, never having stood trial: former SS officer Erich Steidtmann, 95, of Hanover, and Adolf Storms, 90.
A third case reportedly is now under investigation in Bavaria. Klaas Carel F., 88, was convicted in Holland of murdering 22 civilians. He fled a Dutch prison in 1952, and has been living in the German city Ingollstadt. Prosecutors are looking into whether they can sentence him based on the Dutch conviction.
