Man who allegedly served in Auschwitz charged with 3,681 counts of accessory to murder
A 94-year-old man who allegedly served in Auschwitz, now faces 3,681 counts of accessory to murder.
The man was charged by German prosecutors after allegedly serving in the Nazi death camp.
A spokesman for the Schwerin prosecutors Stefan Urbanek, on Monday said the suspect was a sergeant in the SS, and that he served as a medic in Auschwitz in an SS hospital.
Based on this information, Urbanek said he helped the camp to kill its victims, and could be charged as an accessory to the crimes which took place in 1944.
Due to privacy laws, the suspect’s name was not released, but the man is one of 30 Auschwitz suspects who federal investigators in 2013 recommended that prosecutors pursue charges against under a new precedent in German law.
The attorney acting for the suspect told the Bild newspaper that there is no evidence to suggest a “concrete criminal act” by his client.
According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, over a million German men were targeted by the Nazis for threatening the “disciplined masculinity” of Germany, and over 100,000 were arrested under a law criminalising homosexuality.
Approximately 50,000 served prison sentences as “convicted homosexuals”, and around 5,000 to 15,000 gay men were imprisoned in concentration camps. Many gay men were imprisoned by the allied authorities after the liberation of the concentration camps as homosexuality remained illegal.
Memorials to gay victims appear in Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Sydney, Tel Aviv and San Francisco.
A memorial was unveiled in Berlin in 2008, next to the Holocaust monument, which consists of a concrete slab with a window where viewers can see a continuous film of two men kissing.
Last week, a number of posters advertising a Holocaust memorial event in East London were defaced.
The posters had been put up around the Stratford area to advertise an event being held on Holocaust Memorial Day by Newham Council.
