The defendant, identified only as Josef S., is charged with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder.<\/b>
\nA 100-year-old man and alleged former Nazi SS guard stood trial Thursday for being an accessory to murder during World War II. The man, who was only identified as Josef S. \u2014 as dictated by German privacy rules \u2014 allegedly worked at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, about a mile from Berlin, and is charged with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder, The Associated Press reports. Josef, who is being tried in Brandenburg, allegedly worked at the camp between 1942 and 1945 as an enlisted member of the Nazi Party\u2019s paramilitary wing. Despite his age, the defendant has been deemed fit to stand trial, albeit with the hours of each court session limited. Scholars estimate that anywhere from 40,000 to 50,000 inmates were killed at the camp, out of the more than 200,000 held there between 1936 and 1945. Other estimates say some 100,000 may have been killed. Inmates died as a result of systematic SS killings like shootings, hangings and gassing, as well as from starvation, disease, medical experiments and exhaustion from forced labor. \u201cThe defendant knowingly and willingly aided and abetted this at least by conscientiously performing guard duty, which was seamlessly integrated into the killing system,\u201d prosecutor Cyrill Klement told the court. His lawyer Stefan Waterkamp told the court that his client did not wish to comment on the allegations, according to German news agency dpa. Christoph Heubner, executive vice president of the Auschwitz Committee, told reporters outside the trial that he found the defendant \u201csurprisingly robust and present\u201d and \u201cwould have the strength to make an apology and he would also have the strength to remember.\u201d \u201cObviously, however, he does not want to muster the strength to remember, and for the survivors of the camps and for the relatives of the murdered who have come here to hear some truth spoken, this means once again a rejection, a disparagement and a confrontation with the continued silence of the SS,\u201d said Heubner. \u201cThis is the last trial for my friends, acquaintances and my loved ones, who were murdered, in which the last guilty person can still be sentenced \u2014 hopefully,\u201d 100-year-old Leon Schwarzbaum, who attended the trial as a visitor, told dpa. Schwarzbaum survived Sachsenhausen as well as the Auschwitz death camp and Buchenwald concentration camp, who also attended the trial. The trial of a former secretary for the 96-year-old Stutthof camp\u2019s SS commander skipped the start of her trial last week, only to be tracked down hours later. Proceedings are set to resume later this month. With News Wire Services<\/p>\n