BERLIN — German prosecutors have charged an 88-year-old former Nazi guard with aiding in the murders of 430,000 Jews at the Belzec death camp during World War II, and with shooting 10 people himself during his time there. The former guard, Samuel Kunz, No. 3 on the list of most wanted Nazi war criminals published by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was indicted earlier this month for crimes committed between January 1942 and July 1943, Christoph Göke, a prosecutor in Dortmund, said Wednesday.
In a case with echoes of the trial under way in Munich of John Demjanjuk, Mr. Kunz, an ethnic German who served in the Soviet Red Army, was captured by the German Army and given a choice of whether to remain a prisoner or cooperate with the Nazis, and he chose to cooperate. . Mr. Göke said that Mr. Kunz later trained at the Trawniki SS camp to work as a concentration camp guard.
Unlike Mr. Demjanjuk, who is not charged with specific murders, Mr. Göke said, Mr. Kunz is accused of personally shooting two people on one occasion and eight more on another day.
Mr. Kunz has not been arrested and he hung up without comment when reached briefly by telephone on Wednesday. The Associated Press reported that he said he did not wish to discuss the accusations.
He was informed last week of the charges against him, but law enforcement authorities said they had not taken him into custody because he was not considered a flight risk. Matthias Nordmeyer, deputy press spokesman at the district court in Bonn where Mr. Kunz is expected to be tried, said that no court date had been set.
“This reflects the changed, more proactive German prosecution policy, starting about two years ago,” said Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
“It underscores the fact that these people can be brought to justice despite the time that’s passed since their crimes were committed, and in that respect it’s very important,” Mr. Zuroff said.
German prosecutors last year indicted a 90-year-old man, Adolf Storms, a former SS sergeant, on 58 counts of murder for his suspected role in the massacre of a group of Jewish laborers near the Austrian village of Deutsch Schützen in March 1945. Mr. Storms died last month before he could be brought to trial.
