An elderly German, who served in the army of Nazi Germany and served as a guard in a camp for Soviet prisoners of war in World War II, is accused of war crimes, in an unusual case in which the German prosecution prosecutes crimes that were not directed against prisoners in the concentration and extermination camps.
The accused (98), whose name has not been published, was a soldier in the Wehrmacht and served in the detention camp “Stag-365” for prisoners of war in the city of Volodymyr-Volinsky, now in the territory of Ukraine, between November 1942 and March 1943. According to the indictment, during that period 809 Soviet prisoners died in the camp due to Hunger, disease, hard work and lack of medical care.
According to the prosecution, the former soldier was complicit in the cruel behavior towards the detainees in the camp. “He was aware of the deprivation and starvation of prisoners of war and therefore he became an accomplice to the crime,” a spokeswoman for the Berlin Criminal Courts told the British “Times”.
The Berlin court asked the prosecution to receive further clarifications before determining whether the criminal proceedings against the elderly defendant could continue. If a decision is made to open a trial, it is a rare procedure that is not related to trials against defendants who served in the concentration and extermination camps, and it will also raise the issue of the involvement of ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers in the Nazi crimes.
Thomas Weil, head of the central office of the State Administration of Justice for investigations of Nazi crimes in the city of Ludwigsberg, emphasized that there is no significant difference between the treatment of those imprisoned in the concentration camps and the prisoners of war. “A detainee in the POW camps went through exactly the same path as in the concentration camps: the Soviet prisoners were considered worthless and the Jews were also considered worthless,” he said. “The fact is that in camps with prisoners of war, especially Soviets, the conditions were catastrophic and we can talk about systematic killing due to the hostile conditions there.”