Germany investigates alleged 105-year-old Nazi POW camp guard

Last year, prosecutors in Dortmund opened an investigation into a 100-year-old former guard at another World War II prisoner-of-war camp in Hemer.(AFP) — German prosecutors are investigating a 105-year-old man over possible crimes committed at a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp during World War II, they said Thursday.“The 105-year-old suspect is thought to have been a guard at the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag 326 VI K” in western Germany’s Senne region, prosecutors told AFP in a statement. The man is “accused of being an accessory to multiple murders through his activities there.”The Bild newspaper first reported the case. It said another former guard at the same camp had recently been investigated but had since died.The camp held between 180,000 and 200,000 Soviet prisoners of war from 1941 until April 1945, when American troops liberated it, according to a memorial at the site.“Of the approximately 5.3 to 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war who were taken into German captivity overall, between 2.3 and three million did not survive,” the memorial says.Soviet prisoners of war suffered from “malnutrition, inadequate medical care, appalling sanitary conditions, and … forced labour,” it says.Last year, prosecutors in Dortmund opened an investigation into a 100-year-old former guard at another World War II prisoner-of-war camp in Hemer, which also held mostly Soviet prisoners. He was suspected of taking part in executions between December 1943 and September 1944.Several Nazi camp staff members have been tried in recent years. The cases were spurred by the 2011 conviction of former Sobibor death camp guard John Demjanjuk, even though there was no proof he had directly killed anyone.But more than 80 years after the war ended, time is running out. Josef Schuetz, a former guard sentenced to five years in prison in June 2022, died less than a year later at age 102.In April 2025, an alleged former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin died before he could stand trial on charges of complicity in the murders of more than 3,300 people.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads