According to the prosecutor’s office in Neuruppin, Brandenburg, the man is charged with “knowingly” complicity in the murder of prisoners at Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, from January 1942 to February 1945.
The allegations include involvement in the shooting of Soviet POWs in 1942, and aiding and encouraging the murder of prisoners using the poison gas Zyklon B, as well as other shootings and the killing of prisoners by creating and maintaining hostile conditions in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Sachsenhausen was founded in 1936. Of the approximately 200,000 prisoners who passed through, about 100,000 are said to have died. During World War II, the camp’s prisoner population fluctuated between about 11,000 and 48,000 people.
The prosecution deems the man fit to face trial despite his advanced age, Cyrill Klement, the senior prosecutor at the Neuruppin District Court, told CNN.
Klement told CNN that the Neuruppin regional court had consulted a forensic psychiatrist and found the man could attend the trial, albeit only for a few hours a day, with breaks.
The court is now considering whether the trial will continue. The suspect is first given the opportunity to respond to the charge.
According to the Central Office for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, German prosecutors are investigating several other cases related to the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Stutthof concentration camps.
During World War II, an estimated 6 million Jewish people were killed in Nazi concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of Roma people and people with physical or mental disabilities also lost their lives.
CNN’s Nadine Schmidt contributed to the reporting.