[JURIST] German prosecutors on Monday charged a 93-year-old former Waffen SS volunteer with aiding in the murder of at least 300,000 people during his time as a volunteer at Auschwitz. The man is accused of helping collect money stolen from the disposed luggage of inmates and transferring it to the SS’s economy and administration agency in Berlin. Prosecutors said that the money he collected helped fund the Nazis and supported the systematic killings. Germany’s central Nazi crime investigation unit [official website, in German] asked prosecutors last year to investigate 30 former guards at Auschwitz.
Despite the ages of the accused, authorities have continued to arrest individuals charged with crimes during the Holocaust. Last year German prosecutors brought a 92 year old former Nazi to trial [JURIST report]. However, his case was dropped [JURIST report] in January due to too many gaps in the evidence. In June 2013 Hungarian prosecutors charged [JURIST report] Laszlo Csatary, a 98-year-old Hungarian man, with the unlawful execution and torture of people in connection with the Holocaust. Csatary died [JURIST report] in August 2013 while awaiting trial. In May 2013 German authorities arrested [JURIST report] a 93-year-old man for allegedly serving as a guard at Auschwitz and assisting in the mass murder carried out at the death camp. German prosecutors have reopened [JURIST report] hundreds of investigations involving former death camp guards after the conviction [JURIST report] of John Demjanjuk [NNDB profile; JURIST news archive] in May 2011 for the murder of thousands during the Holocaust. Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in prison but was released early due to old age and died in September 2011 while awaiting an appeal [JURIST report].