Nazi concentration camp guard, 100, cleared to face trial
Gregor Formanek
A 100-year-old former concentration camp guard could face justice over the murder of thousands of prisoners after a German regional court dismissed an earlier ruling which determined he was unfit to stand trial.
Gregor Formanek is accused of aiding and abetting the murder of 3,300 people while working as a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Berlin.
Earlier this year, a German regional court suspended the proceedings against Mr Formanek due to a “permanent inability to stand trial”.
But according to Bild, a German tabloid, that decision has now been overruled by a higher court, opening the door to a trial in the near future.
Mr Formanek is suspected of playing a role in the “cruel and insidious” murder of thousands of prisoners at Sachsenhausen between July 1943 and February 1945.
A later document drawn up by the East German Stasi secret police states Mr Formanek, who was a teenager at the time of the alleged offences, “continually killed prisoners”.
Hans-Jürgen Förster, a lawyer representing plaintiffs in the case, said he was recently informed the higher regional court of Frankfurt had overturned a previous ruling that Mr. Formanek cannot stand trial.
“The Seventh Criminal Senate of the higher regional court of Frankfurt am Main… overturned the decision of the Second Grand Criminal Division of the Hanau regional court of May 6 2024, which had rejected the opening of the proceedings due to the permanent incapacity of the accused to stand trial,” he told Bild.
Tens of thousands of people were murdered at Sachsenhausen concentration camp - Popperfoto
Mr. Formanek was charged in August 2023 when he was 98 years old, but the procedure was bogged down by questions over his fitness to stand trial.
Since 2011, Germany has been prosecuting ex-Nazis for crimes they committed decades ago, with prosecutors racing against time to secure convictions before the defendants die of old age.
The Nazis used Sachsenhausen to imprison political prisoners, Jews, Soviet soldiers, gypsies and Roma people. Tens of thousands of people were murdered by the SS, either by execution, forced labour, starvation or medical experiments.
It would not be the first time a centenarian ex-Nazi goes to trial in Germany. In 2022, Josef Schütz, then 101, was found guilty of conspiracy in mass murder at Sachsenhausen.
Though he was given a five-year prison sentence he appealed against the verdict and died in April 2023 without spending time behind bars.
Schütz had denied being an SS concentration camp guard during his trial, during which he held up a blue folder to hide his face.
But the court heard that SS documents had been found which included his name and birth details, contradicting his claim that he had been a farm labourer and not at the camp.
He expressed no remorse, telling the court: “I don’t know why I’m sitting here in the sin bin. I had nothing to do with it.”
Oskar Gröning, the so-called bookkeeper of Auschwitz, also escaped jail time as he filed a series of appeals and then died in 2018 while the courts were still processing them.
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