93-year-old former Nazi SS guard to be tried in Germany

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(JTA) — A 93-year-old man accused of being a guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp will be tried in Germany next year for being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews.

On Monday, the court in Lueneberg said that the man, who was not identified, is alleged to have been an SS guard for the Nazis. The man is also believed to have been in charge of managing money seized from those deported to Auschwitz, Reuters reported.

The accused allegedly was an SS guard at Auschwitz from September 1942 to October 1944. The charges refer to the period in 1944 between May and July, when 300,000 Jews were murdered upon arrival at the camp.

“The accused knew that, as part of the selection process, those not chosen for work and told they were going to the showers were really going to the gas chambers where they would be put to death in an agonizing manner,” the court said in a statement in September.

Eight of the 16 Holocaust survivors who came forward were chosen as witnesses, Reuters reported.

Most of those who are suspected of being former Nazis are either dead or unfit for trial, but in September the Simon Wiesenthal Center sent the German government a list of 80 Nazi suspects who should be investigated.

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