BERLIN
— German prosecutors have charged an 88-year-old former Nazi
guard with aiding in the murders of 430,000 Jews at the Belzec
death camp during World War II, and with shooting 10 people
himself during his time there.
The former guard, Samuel Kunz, No. 3 on the list of most wanted Nazi war criminals
published by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was indicted earlier
this month for crimes committed between January 1942 and
July 1943, Christoph Göke, a prosecutor in Dortmund, said
Wednesday.
In a case with echoes of the trial
under way in Munich of John Demjanjuk, Mr. Kunz, an ethnic
German who served in the Soviet Red Army, was captured by
the German Army and given a choice of whether to remain a
prisoner or cooperate with the Nazis, and he chose to cooperate.
. Mr. Göke said that Mr. Kunz later trained at the Trawniki
SS camp to work as a concentration camp guard.
Unlike Mr. Demjanjuk, who is not charged
with specific murders, Mr. Göke said, Mr. Kunz is accused
of personally shooting two people on one occasion and eight
more on another day.
Mr. Kunz has not been arrested and
he hung up without comment when reached briefly by telephone
on Wednesday. The Associated Press reported that he said
he did not wish to discuss the accusations.
He was informed last week of the charges
against him, but law enforcement authorities said they had
not taken him into custody because he was not considered
a flight risk. Matthias Nordmeyer, deputy press spokesman
at the district court in Bonn where Mr. Kunz is expected
to be tried, said that no court date had been set.
“This reflects the changed, more proactive
German prosecution policy, starting about two years ago,”
said Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal
Center.
“It underscores the fact that these
people can be brought to justice despite the time that’s
passed since their crimes were committed, and in that respect
it’s very important,” Mr. Zuroff said.
German prosecutors last year indicted
a 90-year-old man, Adolf Storms, a former SS sergeant, on
58 counts of murder for his suspected role in the massacre
of a group of Jewish laborers near the Austrian village of
Deutsch Schützen in March 1945. Mr. Storms died last month
before he could be brought to trial.
nytimes.com
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