A 94-year-old Auschwitz guard will go on trial on 170,000 counts of accessory to murder in Western Germany.
The man has been accused of serving in the death camp at a time when hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were gassed.
Former SS Sergeant Reinhold Hanning maintains that he served in a part of the Auschwitz camp complex where gassing didn’t take place.
The prosecution argued that all guards helped the camp function. They also argued that during the so-called “Hungarian Action” in 1944, almost all of were called upon to help deal with the cast numbers of people arriving at the complex in Nazi-occupied Poland.
A 94-year-old survivor from Berlin has been scheduled to testify Thursday, the opening day of the trial.
It’s unclear whether Hanning will first make a statement.
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