A 100-year-old concentration camp guard refused to make a statement as he became the oldest man to go on trial for Nazi-era crimes today.

The centenarian, identified only as Josef S,

A 100-year-old concentration camp guard refused to make a statement as he became the oldest man to go on trial for Nazi-era crimes today.

The centenarian, identified only as Josef S, also hid his face from cameras as he appeared in court in Germany charged with complicity in 3,518 murders at the Sachsenhausen death camp between 1942 and 1954. 

Charges against him include aiding and abetting the 'execution by firing squad of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942' and the murder of prisoners 'using the poisonous gas Zyklon B'.

Josef's refusal to speak is significant because trials of former guards provide a chance to amass new evidence about what happened at Nazi death camps and enter in into historical record.

Other guards - including 'Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' Oskar Groening - have spoken about their activities at the camps during their trials.

Josef S, 100, is the oldest person ever put on trial for Nazi-era crimes as appears in court charged with complicity in murder at the Sachsenhausen death camp

Josef is charged with complicity in 3,518 murders by aiding and abetting 'executions by firing squad' and the murder of prisoners 'using the poisonous gas Zyklon B'

Josef's trial is taking place at a court in the town of Neuruppin - north of Berlin and close to where the camp was located - with hearings due to last just a few hours each day due to Josef's advanced age. 

He is just the latest elderly member of the Nazi genocide machine to be put on trial for crimes committed during the Second World War. 

The case comes a week after a 96-year-old German woman, who was a secretary in a Nazi death camp, dramatically fled before the start of her trial but was caught several hours later.

She too has been charged with complicity in murder. Her trial resumes October 19.

Prosecutors have been going after camp administrative staff in recent years, relying on a 2011 ruling that meant former Nazis can be held responsible for deaths in camps where they worked even if it cannot be proved they personally killed anyone.

Despite his advanced age, a medical assessment in August found that Josef S. was fit to stand trial. The proceedings are expected to last until early January.

'He is not accused of having shot anyone in particular but of having contributed to these acts through his work as a guard and of having been aware such killings were happening at the camp,' a court spokeswoman said.

Thomas Walther, a lawyer representing several camp survivors and victims' relatives in the case, said that even 76 years after the end of World War II, trials like these were necessary to hold perpetrators to account.

'There's no expiry date on justice,' he told AFP.

One of his clients is Antoine Grumbach, 79, whose father Jean was in the French resistance and was killed in Sachsenhausen in 1944.

He hopes Josef S. will shed light on the methods used to kill people in the camp, but also that the accused 'will say 'I was wrong, I am ashamed'', Grumbach told AFP.

Leon Schwarzbaum, a Holocaust survivor, holds up a picture of his relatives as he attends the court hearing in the town of Neuruppin, Germany

Josef (left) was found fit to stand trial by a medical examiner last year but the court will only sit for a few hours each day because of his advanced age

The Nazi SS guard detained more than 200,000 people at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1936 and 1945, including Jews, Roma, regime opponents and gay people.

Tens of thousands of inmates died from forced labour, murder, medical experiments, hunger or disease before the camp was liberated by Soviet troops, according to the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum.

Little is known about the accused, beyond the fact that he was released from captivity as a prisoner of war in 1947 and went to work as a locksmith in the Brandenburg region of what was then Communist East Germany, the Bild newspaper reported.

The centenarian's lawyer, Stefan Waterkamp, said his client 'has stayed silent' so far on the charges against him.

If convicted, Josef S. could spend several years in jail but Waterkamp said sentences in cases like these are 'mostly symbolic', given that the accused have reached the end of their lives.

Germany has been hunting down former Nazi staff since the 2011 conviction of former guard John Demjanjuk, on the basis that he served as part of Hitler's killing machine, set a legal precedent.

Since then, courts have handed down several guilty verdicts on those grounds rather than for murders or atrocities directly linked to the individual accused.

Among those brought to late justice were Oskar Groening, an accountant at Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard at Auschwitz.

Both were convicted at the age of 94 of complicity in mass murder but died before they could be imprisoned.

Most recently, former SS guard Bruno Dey was found guilty at the age of 93 last year and was given a two-year suspended sentence.

Prosecutors are investigating eight other cases, according to the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes.

Josef S served at the Sachsenhausen camp (pictured) from 1942 until 1945, and is accused of complicity in 3,518 murders that happened during his time there

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.

Prisoners arrive at the Sachsenhausen camp. The inverted triangle on the front of their uniforms mean these men are not Jews but fall into another category of Nazi 'undesirables' - most-likely political prisoners, as many were housed at this camp

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.

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 o 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 new 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.  

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