A 99-year-old former Nazi death camp guard will not face justice after a court in Germany declared him unfit to stand trial.
Former SS trooper Gregor Formanek was due to stand trial for his part in the death of more than 3,000 Holocaust victims at the notorious Sachsenhausen camp in World War II.
He was dubbed the last guard because most of the Nazis who ran the death camps have now died of old age.
More than 200,000 victims passed through the hard labour camp with its poison gas chambers and laboratories for surgical experiments on prisoners.
Formanek had been formally charged for assisting the deaths between July 1943 and February 1945 by Giessen Public Prosecutor’s Office in Hesse State.
The charges were brought days before Formanek turned 99 after he was run to ground in a quiet Frankfurt suburb in September last year.
Giessen Public Prosecutor’s Office spokesperson Thomas Hauburger said at the time: “He is accused of aiding and abetting murder in more than 3,300 cases between July 1943 and February 1945.”
Prosecutors stated that Formanek had “supported the cruel and treacherous killing of thousands of prisoners”.
An earlier medical report declared Formanek fit to stand trial.
But, reports German media, the charges against him were dismissed by Hanau District Courts on 26th June after a new health study.
Judges have now declared Formanek permanently unfit to stand trial, according to local media reports.
Romanian-born Formanek first signed up for the SS on 4th July 1943, and became an active member of the Sachsenhausen Guard Battalion.
The concentration camp was built in Oranienburg, 30 miles north of Berlin, in 1936 and held many political prisoners.
One inmate was Soviet Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s oldest son Yakov Dzhugashvili.
The camp served as a sick testing ground for more efficient mass killing methods as Nazi death camps spread across occupied Europe.
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