Last surviving Nazi focus camp guard dominated unfit to face trial

The last known surviving Nazi concentration camp guard is ruled unfit to face trial.

Gregor Formanek, 99, is accused of helping to murder 3,300 people at the notorious WW2 prison Sachsenhausen in Germany, known for its gas chambers and horrifying medical experiments and executions used as a model for Auschwitz.

Formanek, from the Main-Kinzig district in the German state of Hesse, was due to stand trial for his role in the killings, but a court has ruled that he is unfit to stand trial based on an expert assessment.

The expert deemed the former SS man unfit due to his advanced age and alleged poor health condition, local media reports.

Formanek lived undetected for decades in a modest flat near Frankfurt, until reporters tracked him down last year – but the former camp guard remained silent on the allegations against him.

Gregor Formanek’s service as an SS guard is confirmed by a document from the Main Personnel Office of the SS

Built in 1936 to house high-ranking political prisoners, Sachsenhausen is the camp where the Nazis perfected killing methods that were scaled up and used to murder millions at larger and more notorious camps such as Auschwitz (pictured: prisoners at Sachsenhausen)

A roll call in the early morning or late evening hours in front of the gate of the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen is pictured above

Incriminating documents from the Federal Archives and the Stasi Records Archive reveal Formanek’s horrific past.

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 Stasi document chillingly notes that Formanek ‘continued to kill prisoners’.

Holocaust survivor Jurek Szarf, 90, vividly recounted the brutal treatment prisoners endured at Sachsenhausen.

Deported at age ten to Ravensbrueck with his aunt and mother, Jurek was later transferred to Koenigs Wusterhausen and then Sachsenhausen.

His mother starved to death in the Wusterhausen concentration camp in February 1945.

‘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,’ Mr Szarf told German newspaper Bild about being freed in April 1945 aged 12.

He was deported to Sachsenhausen from the other concentration camp where he was held just days before he was freed.

Mr Szarf said: ‘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.’ 

In his CV, Formanek left out his role as a concentration camp guard, only saying he was ‘called up for military service in Germany, where I spent 20 months’. 

It is estimated that 200,000 prisoners passed through Sachsenhausen and that 30,000 people were murdered there, not including Soviet prisoners (pictured: some of the prisoners at the camp)

The infamous ‘Work Sets You Free’ sign at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp gates, picture on the memorial service in January 2019

A bedroom for inmates at the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp site of the Sachsenhausen memorial in Oranienburg, Germany

After reading the CV, Mr Szarf said to Bild: ‘He doesn’t mention Sachsenhausen. The SS guards insulted and beat us in the concentration camps. We weren’t human to them.’

After the war, Formanek was arrested by the Red Army and sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal to 25 years in prison for espionage and crimes against humanity.

Released after ten years, he moved to West Germany and lived quietly as a porter.

The local public prosecutor’s office plans to appeal the ruling that Formanek is unfit to stand trial, with a final decision to be made by the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main.

Sachsenhausen: Camp where the Nazis ‘perfected’ mass murder

Built in 1936 to house high-ranking political prisoners, Sachsenhausen is the camp where the Nazis perfected killing methods that were scaled up and used to murder millions at larger and more notorious camps such as Auschwitz.

Early executions at Sachsenhausen were done by putting prisoners into a room and asking them to stand against a wall to have their height measured, before they were shot in the back of the neck through a hidden hatch.

This proved effective but time-consuming, so the Nazis began piling people into a ditch where they were either shot or hanged.

While this proved better at killing large numbers of people, it caused prisoners to panic and made the process more difficult.

It was after these trials that Nazi executioners landed on the idea of using poison gas with some of the earliest experiments carried out at Sachsenhausen using small chambers or vans.

In 1945 Soviet troops liberated the unguarded, weak and ill prisoners who were too unwell to join the forced death march and were left behind a day before (pictured: some of the prisoners at the camp) 

Like most other camps, Sachsenhausen was used to house and kill Jews, homosexuals and other ‘undesirables’ – but it also housed a large number of notable politicians and political figures.

Among its inmates were Yakov Dzhugashvili, Joseph Stalin’s eldest son, Paul Reynaud, the penultimate Prime Minister of France, Francisco Largo Caballero, Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic, and the wife and children of the Crown Prince of Bavaria.

It operated as a Nazi camp until 1945 when it was liberated by the Soviets. 

During that time some 200,000 prisoners were sent there, about half of whom died – in-part due to executions, but also from disease and over-work.

After the war the camp continued to function, this time as a Soviet prison, and continued to house political prisoners.

Some 60,000 people were locked up there by the Red Army, including formers Nazis, Russian who had collaborated with them, and anti-Communist opponents of Stalin’s regime.

One of the men running the camp during this time was Roman Rudenko, the Soviet’s chief prosecutor during the Nuremburg Trials.

It is thought some 12,000 people died in Sachsenhausen under the Soviets before the camp was permanently closed in 1950.

After it was closed, excavations were carried out to try and recover the remains of some of those who died there.

In total, the bodies of some 12,500 victims were recovered – mostly children, adolescents and elderly people.