A 93-year-old man is to appear before a German court on charges of assisting in the murders of at least 300,000 people when he was a volunteer for the Nazi SS during World War II, the public prosecutor's office in Hanover said Monday.
The trial is due to start in the district court of the northern city of Lueneberg on April 21, the prosecutor said.
The man is accused of disposing of the luggage of recently arrived prisoners to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland in 1944.
The prosecutor said the defendant knew that the mostly Jewish prisoners who had been designated unfit to work would be killed in the gas chambers. He is accused of supporting the systematic murder of the inmates by his work.
The man is believed to have worked on the railway ramp in the Birkenau section of the camp from May to July 1944 during the period known as the Hungary campaign. From May 16 to July 11 that year, 137 trains delivered 425,000 deported Hungarian Jews to the death camp.
The court has said that there are 55 joint plaintiffs in the case. The trial has been scheduled over 26 days through the end of July.
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