Germany investigates 105-year-old for crimes committed in World War II

A german justice is investigating a 105-year-old for suspicion of having been complicit in several crimes, including murders, in a Nazi POW camp during World War II.

In a statement quoted by the France-Presse news agency (AFP), the German prosecutor said that “the 105-year-old suspect will have been guarded in the Stalag prisoners of war camp 326 VI K”, in the Senne region, in western Germany.

The man is “accused of having been complicit in various homicides through the activities he performed on the spot.”.

As quoted in the note, Dortmund’s prosecutor Sonja Frodermann explained that another 99 - year - old guard was also under investigation, but eventually died a few months ago. So far, no further information on the suspects has been released.

The Stalag 326 VI K was one of Germany's largest prison camps, having housed between 180,000 and 200,000 Soviet Red Army soldiers between 1941 and 1945, until it was released by American troops. 

According to the BBC, the camp also had prisoners from France, Poland, Serbia and Belgium, who lived in deplorable living conditions and were subjected to extreme maltreatment and malnutrition. 

In recent years, Germany has judged and condemned several former SS (Schutztaffe) and extended the charges against former Nazi concentration camp guards for complicity in the death of prisoners.

For example, Josef Schuetz, a former guard, was sentenced in June 2022 to five years in prison, but died less than a year later at the age of 102. At the time, she was the oldest person ever to be tried for crimes committed by the Nazi regime.

Already in April 2025, another former Sachsenhausen concentration camp guard near Berlin died before he could be tried on charges of complicity in the murder of more than 3,300 people.

In 2021, a former German secretary of a Nazi concentration camp was prosecuted for complicity in thousands of deaths. I was 96 years old.