Former Auschwitz Guard Goes on Trial for Nazi-Era Killings

A 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard will be on trial on 170,000 counts of accessory to murder in Nazi Germany.

Entrance of the former German Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, with the inscription “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets You Free). (Photo: AP)

A 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard is going on trial on 170,000 counts of accessory to murder in western Germany, accused of serving in the death camp at a time when hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were gassed.

Former SS Sargent Reinhold Hanning maintains that he served in a part of the Auschwitz camp complex where no gassing was taking place.

Prosecutors argue, that all guards helped the camp function, and that during the so-called “Hungarian action” in 1944 almost all were called upon to help deal with the vast numbers of people arriving at the killing complex in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Leon Schwarzbaum, a 94-year-old Auschwitz survivor from Berlin, is scheduled to testify Thursday, the opening day of the trial. It is unclear whether Hanning will first make a statement.

Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Leon Schwarzbaum presents an old photograph showing himself, left, next to his uncle and parents who all died in Auschwitz. (Photo: AP)

The three men and one woman accused, are all in their nineties and will be tried over the next few months, starting with Hanning in Germany’s Detmold.

Hanning was 20 years old in 1942, when he started serving as a guard at the Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland where more than 1.1 million Jews were killed by the Nazis.

Prosecutors said he voluntarily joined the armed SS at the age of 18 and participated in battles in eastern Europe during the early stages of World War Two before being transferred to Auschwitz in January 1942.

Another camp witness is Erna de Vries, who in 1943 at the age of 23 was deported to Auschwitz along with her mother.

Considered a “Jewish crossbreed” as her father was Protestant, she was saved from the gas chamber and transferred to a labour camp.

I survived, but up until today I don’t know how exactly my mother was killed. The last thing she said to me was, ‘You will survive and tell what happened to us’. I am not hateful but it somehow feels like justice to see this man, who was working there when my mother died, on trial.

<b>Erna de Vries, Auschwitz camp survivor to <i>Reuters</i></b>

Investigations by Germany’s special Nazi war crimes office in Ludwigsburg show that Hanning served as a guard at Auschwitz until at least June 1944.

While Hanning admitted to his guard duties in a statement to the prosecution, he denied involvement in the mass killings.

A group of children wearing concentration camp uniforms behind barbed wire fencing in the Oswiecim (Auschwitz) Nazi concentration camp. (Photo: AP)

But, investigators say he also served at Auschwitz’s Birkenau sub-division where about 90 percent of more than 1.2 million killings in the camp were carried out in four gas chambers.

Prosecutors maintain that the Nazis’ killing machinery hinged on people like Hanning guarding the prisoners and have accused him of expediting, or at least facilitating, the murders.

Given the age of the accused, trials are delayed due to lengthy procedures to determine whether they are fit to be in court. Hearings are also restricted to two hours per day.

But, Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, responsible for war crime investigations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said age should not be viewed as an obstacle to prosecution.

When you think of these cases, don’t think of frail, old, sick men and women, but of young people who devoted their energies to a system that implemented the (Nazis’ so-called) Final Solution and aimed to obliterate the Jewish people.

<b>Zuroff to <i>Reuters</i></b>

(With inputs from AP and Reuters.)