Suspected Nazi guard charged with murder of 430,000 jews

State prosecutors in the western city of Dortmund announced that charges had been filed against Samuel Kunz, 88, for assisting in the murder of Jews at Nazi death camp Belzec near the Polish city of Lublin between January 1942 and July 1943.

Kunz is also accused of shooting 10 Jews in two separate incidents, prosecutors' spokesman Christoph Goeke said.

Because Kunz was under 21 at the start of the period under investigation, the trial will probably be held in the youth chamber of a court in nearby Bonn, prosecutors said. No date has been set for the trial.

Kunz's case came to light during investigations into Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk, who went on trial in Munich last year, charged with helping to kill 27,900 Jews in the Holocaust.

Like Demjanjuk, Kunz was born in what became the Soviet Union and served in the Red Army, becoming a camp guard after his capture by the Germans, prosecutors said.

Kunz is number three on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals. The charges against him sent out a powerful signal that perpetrators would be brought to justice, said the Centre's chief Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff.