The Sun tracks down WW2 concentration camp guard – the last Nazi likely to face justice over war crimes
THE Sun has tracked down the last Nazi likely to face justice.
Gregor Formanek, 98, was a guard at a concentration camp where 100,000 prisoners died during the Holocaust.
He is accused of the “cruel and treacherous killing” of 3,300.
Formanek worked for the SS at the Sachsenhausen camp, in Oranienburg, 30 miles north of Berlin.
Set up in 1936, it was seen as a training ground for Hitler’s mass extermination.
Last night Rosalyn Peake, 66 — whose Jewish dad Leslie Kleinman was at the camp — said: “He only survived because he lied about being 14 instead of 16.”
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Rosalyn, of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, added: “It is justice for me for Formanek to be named.
"And it’s vital for teaching future generations.”
Carmen Whitmore, 68 — whose uncle, Great Escape pilot Jimmy James, was at Sachsenhausen — said: “It really is significant if this man is one of the last Nazis convicted of World War Two crimes.”
Carmen, of Market Harborough, Leics, declared: “They need to be held accountable.”
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The Sun found Formanek living in a £400,000 apartment in an unassuming suburb of Frankfurt.
His neighbours believed him to be a retired company manager.
Asked if he was a Nazi, he insisted: “First, tell me who you are.”
His wife added: “Don’t say he was an SS man so loudly. People will wonder what’s going on.”
More than 200,000 prisoners passed through Sachsenhausen — a labour camp with a gas chamber and labs for medical experiments.
Formanek has now been indicted by German prosecutors for crimes from July 1943 to February 1945.
Three others have been investigated but are too infirm for trial.
Nazi–hunter Dr Efraim Zuroff, from The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said: “The Sun is doing the right thing here.”
Formanek’s solicitor failed to respond to requests for comment.
