**German prosecutors have charged a 90-year-old alleged former Nazi SS member with the deaths of 58 Jewish forced labourers, officials say.**The man is accused of murdering the workers in Deutsch Schuetzen, an Austrian village, at the end of World War II.
The court has identified the suspect only as a “retiree from Duisburg”.
The victims’ remains were found in a mass grave in 1995 by the Austrian Jewish association.
The German state court was told that on 29 March 29, 1945, the accused together with accomplices brought at least 57 Jewish forced labourers to a forest “where they had to give up their valuables and kneel by a grave”.
“The accused and other SS members then cruelly shot the Jewish forced-labourers from behind,” a prosecution spokesman said.
The 90-year-old man is also accused of shooting another Jew who could no longer walk during a forced march on the same day or the day after, the court was told.
The victims’ mass grave is now marked by a plaque.
Prosecutors began investigating the case last year, when they were alerted by an Austrian university student who had been researching the massacre, the Associated Press news agency reported.
Prosecutor Andreas Brendel told AP that three former members of the Hitler Youth had provided testimony in Austria.
A fourth former Hitler Youth member, now living in Canada, is being interviewed this week, he said.