Auschwitz guards will face criminal charges for their Nazi past.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , former Nazi guard Siert Bruins is facing trial for the shooting of a Dutch resistance fighter.
Former Nazi members can be found hiding all over the globe. A Nazi commander in Minnesota made US headlines because of his alleged crimes including his involvement in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
But former Nazis can still be found even in Germany. The Auschwitz guards trial will send Nazi files for 30 German individuals who worked in the Auschwitz death camps.
More than 7,000 Auschwitz guards from the Nazi SS oversaw the gas chambers and forced labor camps that killed about 1.1 million Jews. Many people died from starvation or medical experiments. Ever since the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, around 106,000 former Nazis have been prosecuted for war crimes.
Thomas Walther, who has led the investigations against the Auschwitz guards, explains why this new Auschwitz guards trial is so important:
“It is the first time since the 1960s that the German nation… is going to investigate such a large number of its citizens (for war crimes) and perhaps charge them. It shows that 50 years after the first Auschwitz trials, a large number of these people still live among us and many of them have led quiet lives these last 50 years without ever being investigated. That is a major, major mistake of the German justice system.”
Besides the 30 Auschwitz guards located in Germany, there are another seven located around the globe. The oldest of the former Auschwitz guards is said to be age 97. If these 37 individuals are brought to trial it’s possible they may die before an appeals process is over. For some there may not be any evidence of direct crimes, but the prosecutors of the Auschwitz guards trial say they are “guilty of complicity in murder.”