Johann Rehbogen Former guard at Stutthof concentration camp Date of Birth: . Country: Germany

1. Former Stutthof Guard on Trial
2. Accusations and Charges
3. Prosecution's Case
4. Defense's Position
5. Trial Significance
6. Ongoing Nazi Prosecutions
7. Legal Precedent and Significance
8. Trial Implications for Stutthof Guards
9. Background on Stutthof
10. Increased Prisoner Population in Late War

Former Stutthof Guard on Trial

A 94-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, Johann Rehbogen, is facing trial as a juvenile for crimes committed at Stutthof camp decades ago.

Accusations and Charges

Rehbogen, a former SS soldier, is accused of complicity in the brutal killings that took place during his time as a guard at the Stutthof concentration camp. He served at the Nazi camp, located east of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), from June 1942 to early September 1944. While there, Rehbogen denies any knowledge of the atrocities committed at Stutthof and claims he never participated in killing any of its inhabitants.

Prosecution's Case

Prosecutors allege that Rehbogen was an accessory to at least 100 executions at the camp. Prisoners at Stutthof were murdered in a gas chamber, given lethal injections of petrol and phenol to the heart, shot, starved, or forced to stand naked in the freezing cold, noted prosecutor Andreas Brendel. Despite lacking direct evidence linking Rehbogen to specific crimes, prosecutors argue that, as a guard at Stutthof, he must have been aware of the atrocities and is therefore complicit.

Defense's Position

Rehbogen's attorney, Andreas Tinkl, stated that his client will make a statement in the Itzehoe state court, where the trial is expected to continue until January 2019. The exact date of the former guard's statement remains undisclosed. Due to Rehbogen's age and health, the court has limited the hearings to a maximum of two hours a day, with no more than two consecutive hearing days.

Trial Significance

As Rehbogen was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes, the trial is being held in a juvenile court. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which helped locate 20 surviving former Stutthof prisoners as potential witnesses, emphasized the importance of these hearings, which come seven decades after the end of World War II. "Neither the passage of time nor advanced age diminish the guilt of those who perpetrated genocide against the Jewish people," said the center's director, Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff.

Ongoing Nazi Prosecutions

Despite the dwindling number of suspects, the special federal prosecutor's office in Ludwigsburg, which investigates wartime crimes, remains active. In addition to pursuing Nazi suspects who worked at Stutthof, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck, Mauthausen, and Flossenbürg camps, prosecutors are also investigating members of deadly paramilitary killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen.

Legal Precedent and Significance

The prosecution's legal approach is based on the theory that Rehbogen can be convicted of being an accessory to murder, even without specific proof, simply for having served as a guard at Stutthof. This legal strategy was first successfully applied against former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk in 2011. Demjanjuk, who was accused of being a guard at the Sobibor death camp, maintained his innocence and died in a nursing home in Bad Feilnbach at the age of 92 while his appeal was pending.

In 2015, German accountant and Auschwitz staff member Oskar Gröning was convicted as an accessory to mass murder and sentenced to four years in prison. Gröning had been responsible for sorting and counting money taken from deportees but claimed to have taken no part in any killings.

Trial Implications for Stutthof Guards

Rehbogen's case, however, marks the first time that prosecutors will use the same legal approach against a guard from a concentration camp, rather than from a death camp. Prosecutors argue that Stutthof, where medical experiments were conducted and human bodies were turned into soap, was no less a place of atrocities, as tens of thousands were killed there.

Background on Stutthof

Stutthof was established in 1939 and initially served as the main collection point for Jews and non-Jewish Poles expelled from nearby Danzig on the Baltic coast. From around 1940, Stutthof became a so-called "work education camp" where forced laborers—primarily Polish and Soviet citizens who had come into conflict with the Nazi occupiers—provided the main workforce. Sentenced to the camp as a punishment, many died there. Others who were imprisoned at Stutthof included criminals, political prisoners, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Increased Prisoner Population in Late War

By mid-1944, the camp was filled with tens of thousands of Jews from ghettos liquidated by the Nazis in the Baltics, as well as from Auschwitz, which was overwhelmed, and thousands of Polish civilians rounded up after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.