105-Year-Old Suspect Investigated for Alleged Role at Nazi POW Camp in Germany

German authorities have launched an investigation into a 105-year-old man suspected of crimes committed at a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Prosecutors confirmed on Thursday that the suspect is believed to have served as a guard at Stalag 326 VI K, located in the Senne region of western Germany.

According to a statement provided to AFP, the elderly man is accused of being an accessory to multiple murders through his duties at the facility. The case was initially reported by the Bild newspaper, which noted that another former guard from the same camp had previously been investigated but died before proceedings could conclude.

The Senne camp operated from 1941 until its liberation by American troops in April 1945. A memorial at the site states that between 180,000 and 200,000 Soviet prisoners of war were held there. Of the approximately 5.3 million to 5.7 million Soviet captives taken by Germany overall, between 2.3 million and 3 million perished. The memorial attributes these deaths to malnutrition, lack of medical care, poor sanitary conditions, and forced labor.

This investigation follows similar legal action taken last year in Dortmund, where prosecutors opened a case against a 100-year-old former guard at a WWII camp in Hemer, which also held primarily Soviet inmates. That individual was suspected of participating in executions between December 1943 and September 1944. Another alleged guard at the Hemer camp was charged in 2023.

Legal efforts to prosecute Nazi camp personnel have increased since the 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk, a former Sobibor death camp guard. Demjanjuk, who lived in the U.S. before his arrest, was convicted despite a lack of evidence linking him directly to specific killings. He died in 2012 at age 91.

However, the advancing age of potential suspects is creating urgency. Josef Schuetz, a former guard sentenced to five years in June 2022, died less than a year later at age 102, becoming the oldest person ever tried for Nazi-era crimes at the time. In April 2025, an alleged former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin died before facing trial for complicity in the murders of more than 3,300 people.

Notable past cases include the 2015 conviction of Oskar Groening, known as the “Accountant of Auschwitz,” who was sentenced to four years in prison for accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews. The court ruled that while he did not directly participate in killings, he was aware of the mass murders and facilitated them through his work. Groening died in 2018 before he could begin serving his sentence. Additionally, in 2021, a 96-year-old woman stood trial in Germany accused of 11,000 counts of accessory to murder at a Nazi concentration camp.