A 91-year-old German woman faces accessory to murder charges in the deaths of 260,000 Jews during World War II. The unnamed woman worked at the Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz.
German courts are still determining if a trial should go forward next year, a spokesperson said Monday (Sept. 21). The woman is believed to be fit to stand trial.
Prosecutors in Germany say she worked at Auschwitz for three months in 1944, as a telegraph operator for a camp commander in an all-female unit. During that short period of employment, more than a quarter of a million Jews were murdered in gas chambers.
Her charges come on the heels of 94-year-old former Auschwitz employee, Oskar Groening’s, four-year sentence for being an accessory to 300,000 murders at the camp. Groening was believed to be the last of those charged until the woman was found.
Authorities are still determining if another man, identified as 93-year-old Reinhold Hanning, is healthy enough for a trial. Hanning, who reportedly worked as a Auschwitz guard between 1942 and 1944, is accused in the murders of 170,000. He denies the allegations, maintaining that he was assigned to an area of the camp where murders were not carried out.
More than 1 million Jews were slaughtered during the holocaust. The Auschwitz camp staffed more than 7,000 guards from Schutzstaffel (or SS), a “protective unit” formed by Adolf Hitler in the mid-1920s.
The 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was celebrated at the top of the year. See photos from the camp below (some images are graphic).
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Photo: WENN
