Investigators Track Down Eight Suspects of WW2 Nazi War Crimes in Stutthof

Entrance to the Stutthof concentration camp. Source: By Pipodesign Philipp P Egli - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6991291
Entrance to the Stutthof concentration camp. Source: By Pipodesign Philipp P Egli - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6991291

Investigators from Germany announced that they have eight suspects in their investigation into war crimes at the Stutthof death camp near Gdansk, Poland.

“Following our investigations, we have identified four men and four women,” said Jens Rommel, the head of the central office for Nazi crime investigations in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

Initial legal inquiries have been sent to prosecutors’ offices throughout Germany for “accessory to murder in several thousand cases.” Prosecutors now need to determine whether they have enough evidence to proceed with pressing charges.

Thousands were killed by the Nazis in the Stutthof between June and August of 1944.

The male suspects were guards at the camp. The female suspects were either typists or phone operators.

All of the male suspects are in their late 80s or 90s.

The Ludwigsburg investigators are also looking into Auschwitz and Majdanek. They recently expanded their search to Bergen-Belsen and Neuengamme.

In June, the courts convicted Reinhold Hanning, 94, a former guard at Auschwitz. 

In 2011, John Demjanjuk was convicted of 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder. Because the court ruled that Demjanjuk could be tried based solely on his service record alone, investigators began searching for dozens of suspected guards from Auschwitz suspected of still living in Germany.

There are two currently on trial for accessory to murder.

Ian Harvey

Ian Harvey is one of the authors writing for WAR HISTORY ONLINE