100-year-old former Nazi guard may yet face trial
German authorities want to bring Gregor Formanek, a 100-year-old former guard at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, to trial after all. Formanek is accused of complicity in the murder of 3,322 people during his service at the camp between July 1943 and February 1945.
Earlier, a Hanau court ruled that Formanek was not fit to stand trial because of his mental and physical health. However, a higher court in Frankfurt overturned this decision on Tuesday, criticising that the medical assessment was insufficiently substantiated. The expert had stated that it had not been possible to examine Formanek comprehensively.
Since a landmark ruling in 2011, former Nazi collaborators can be prosecuted as part of Hitler's killing machine even without direct evidence of individual murders. This has since led to several convictions of camp employees. Yet many cases are not prosecuted because the defendants die or are not fit to stand trial.
Sachsenhausen, near Berlin, was a concentration camp from 1936 to 1945 where more than 200,000 people were imprisoned. Among them were Jews, Roma, political opponents and homosexuals. Tens of thousands died through forced labour, murder, medical experiments, starvation and disease before the camp was liberated by the Red Army.
It is still unclear whether Formanek will actually stand trial, but the higher court's decision indicates Germany's commitment to holding the last surviving Nazi collaborators accountable for their actions.
(Fausto by Tagtik/Source: Guardian/Illustration picture: Marta Moreno on Pixabay)