German prosecutors investigate 105-year-old former guard at Stalag 326 Nazi camp

Investigation into Stalag 326 guard

The public prosecutor's office in Dortmund has opened an investigation into a 105-year-old former guard at the Stalag 326 VI K prisoner-of-war camp in Senne, near Stukenbrock in North Rhine-Westphalia. Prosecutors suspect the man of acting as an accessory to multiple counts of murder during the Second World War. The case originated from findings forwarded by the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg. Under German law, murder and accessory to murder do not fall under any statute of limitations, allowing legal proceedings against surviving camp personnel regardless of elapsed time.

The suspect, now aged 105, is alleged to have contributed to multiple homicides through his activities at the time.

A parallel case involving another former guard from the Senne camp was also examined by the Dortmund authorities, which handle Nazi-era crime investigations across North Rhine-Westphalia. Dortmund public prosecutor Sonja Frodermann stated that the second suspect died several months ago at the age of 99 before charges could proceed. German media outlet Bild reported that the 105-year-old suspect may be the oldest individual investigated in the history of the German judicial system. Most guards stationed at the camp were soldiers serving in the Wehrmacht.

Conditions and mortality at the Senne complex

Stalag 326 VI K operated between 1941 and April 1945 in northwestern Germany, functioning as a primary transit and distribution hub for captured soldiers. According to memorial site records, one in three Soviet prisoners of war brought into Nazi Germany passed through the Senne installation. Across the war, the German military registered between 180,000 and 200,000 Soviet prisoners at the camp, alongside separate sections holding prisoners from France, Poland, Serbia, Italy, and Belgium. Inmates were subjected to forced labor in regional manufacturing facilities, commercial enterprises, and extraction mines.

Living conditions inside Stalag 326 were defined by severe malnutrition, inadequate medical treatment, and harsh confinement. Between 15,000 and 65,000 prisoners died at the site due to hunger, infectious diseases, and systemic mistreatment, with tens of thousands buried in surrounding mass graves. The camp was liberated by the United States Army on 2 April 1945. The camp's fatalities formed part of a wider toll: out of an estimated 5.3 million to 5.7 million Soviet soldiers captured by Nazi Germany, between 2.3 million and 3 million died in captivity, while many survivors faced accusations of treason upon returning to the Soviet Union.

Legal precedents and the passage of time

The investigation in Dortmund follows a legal framework established by the 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibór extermination camp in occupied Poland, was sentenced to five years in prison at age 91 for assisting in the murder of more than 28,000 Jewish prisoners, establishing that guards could be convicted for supporting the camp apparatus without evidence of specific killings. Demjanjuk died in 2012 before his appeal concluded. In June 2022, former concentration camp guard Josef Schütz received a five-year prison sentence at age 102, dying less than a year later.

Recent proceedings against nonagenarian and centenarian suspects face severe biological limits more than eight decades after the end of the conflict. In April 2025, a former guard from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp died before facing trial on charges of complicity in more than 3,300 murders. Dortmund prosecutors previously opened an investigation in 2025 into another centenarian guard accused of participating in executions between December 1943 and September 1944. German judicial authorities maintain that securing formal legal verdicts remains essential for providing justice to victims, even when custodial sentences cannot be served.