BERLIN — The German special prosecutors’ office that pursues Nazi-era crimes said Wednesday it was recommending charges be filed against an 87-year-old man on allegations he served as an SS guard at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
The man is accused of involvement in the killing of 344,000 Jews at the camp in occupied Poland from April 1944 until shortly before it was liberated by the Soviet army in January 1945, prosecutor Kurt Schrimm said.
The suspect is a non-German living outside Germany, but Schrimm would give no other details.
Schrimm said charges of accessory to murder can be filed under the same theory that prosecutors used to try former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk, who died in a nursing home in March while appealing his 2011 conviction on charges he served as a guard at Sobibor death camp.