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91-Year-Old Woman to Face Charges for Murder of 260,000 Jews at Auschwitz

The woman was allegedly a radio operator at the infamous death camp, where she was part of an all-female unit that worked with the Nazi SS.
Imagen vía Flickr/Xiquinho Silva

A 91-year-old woman who worked as a radio operator in Auschwitz is being charged with being complicit in the murder of at least 260,000 Jews at the Nazi concentration camp between April and July 1944.

The woman, who has not been named due to German privacy laws, will likely be tried in a juvenile court because she was under the age of 21 when the alleged crimes were committed, according to Heinz Doellel, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein.

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The woman allegedly belonged to an all-female unit that aided the Nazi SS in death camps at a time when tens of thousands of Jews were deported from Hungary under the guidance of German Nazi officials. In May 1944, the Nazis constructed a railroad to transport Hungarian Jews directly into Auschwitz. Upon arrival, thousands were killed in gas chambers.

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Doellel said that the court in the northern German city of Kiel, where the woman will be tried, is unlikely to decide whether to move forward with the case until 2016. He also said there are no indications that she is unfit for trial due to her age.

In July, a 94-year-old former Nazi death camp guard was convicted of complicity in the murder of at least 300,000 people. Oskar Groening — known as "the bookkeeper of Auschwitz" — allegedly counted cash confiscated from prisoners. Groening was sentenced to four years in prison.

Groening says he decided to speak openly about his involvement with the Nazis to counter a wave of Holocaust denial that began decades after the end of World War II. In a 2005 BBC documentary, Groening skirted responsibility and instead stressed the power of propaganda.

"We were convinced by our world view that we had been betrayed" Groening said. "And that there was a great conspiracy of the Jews against us."

Denying full complicity in the genocide, Groening described his role in the death camps as just "a small cog in the gears."

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