BERLIN--Hannover prosecutors have reopened an investigation in which a 95-year-old former SS officer is accused of being involved in two 1943 massacres of Jews in the Polish city of Lublin, according to a GoogleNews.com report.
The prosecutors' office made the decision based on a letter that suspect Erich Steidtmann wrote in October 1943. Steidtmann was a captain in the Nazi's elite force, the SS, and also the head of a company belonging to the infamous Hamburg Polizeibataillon 101.
"We reopened the investigations to check whether he was on vacation during the time of the massacres or whether he was at the location when it happened," prosecutor Kathrin Soefker told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The prosecutor said a new understanding of an abbreviation in the letter could indicate that Steidtmann was not on home leave when the shootings of thousands of Jews took place, as he had told prosecutors during earlier investigations in the 1960s.
The abbreviation in question was a military code to indicate that the sender of the letter was in the field. The letter itself was dated October 31, 1943 — three days before the massacres began.
During the so-called "Mission Harvest Festival" massacres on November 3 and 4, 1943, tens of thousands of Jews in the district of Lublin were shot by Nazi officers, among them members from Steidtmann's Hamburg Polizeibataillon 101 company.
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