Justice Finally on Way for 100-Year-Old Nazi After Bombshell Legal Ruling Over Former SS Guard Accused of Slaughtering 3,322 WW2 Prisoners at Horror Auschwitz-Style Camp
Gregor Formanek is accused of murdering 3,322 people at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Dec. 3 2024, Published 3:58 p.m. ET
A 100-year-old former Nazi could soon finally face trial after a court in Germany cleared the way, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Gregor Formanek was charged with aiding and abetting in more than 3,000 murders while working at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin between July 1943 and February 1945.
Formanek is now 100 years old.
His day of reckoning was initially halted in February, when an expert determined Formanek was not fit to stand trial due to his mental and physical condition. A local court then decided not to press the charges.
However, on Tuesday, a higher court in Frankfurt overturned that decision, arguing the expert’s decision had not been based on "sufficient facts."
The court said: "The expert himself stated that it was not possible to interview the defendant and that the opportunity for extensive psychiatric testing was not available."
The case has been referred back to Hanau Regional Court in the German Hesse state for a new decision on Formanek. The local public prosecutor's office plans to appeal the ruling that he is unfit to stand trial, with a final decision to be made by the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt.
Formanek could face trial as early as next year.
After the war, Formanek lived in Germany
First established in 1936, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp was used as a would-be training ground for Hitler's mass extermination of Jews.
More than 200,000 prisoners passed through Sachsenhausen, which was feared for its gas chambers and chilling medical experiments.
According to reports, Formanek was living quietly for decades in a modest flat near Frankfurt before his capture. Last year, a group of reporters tracked him down.
However, the former camp guard refused to address the allegations against him.
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Born in Romania to a German-speaking tailor, Formanek joined the SS on July 4, 1943, and became part of the Sachsenhausen guard battalion in Brandenburg.
One East German police report described how Formanek would "continually killed prisoners."
Other pieces of evidence revealed the alleged Nazi "supported the cruel and insidious killing of thousands of prisoners."
More than 200,000 people were detained at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1936 and 1945.
One Holocaust survivor, Jurek Szarf, now 90, recounted the harsh treatment prisoners at Sachsenhausen faced.
He told a German newspaper: "I was in the hospital block in Sachsenhausen with my father and my uncle and was supposed to be shot. We waited for hours for the execution, then we were freed."
That was in 1945, when Szarf was just 12-years-old.
Szarf reflected: "The SS drove the prisoners from Sachsenhausen on a long march to escape the approaching Red Army. My father, my uncle and I were too weak to march.
"Two other uncles went with us. One was shot by SS guards, the other was beaten to death."
More than 200,000 people, including Jewish and gay people, were detained at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1936 and 1945.
Tens of thousands died there from forced labor, murder, medical experiments, hunger or disease before the camp was liberated by Soviet troops.
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