A former SS guard, now 100 years old, hobbled into a German courtroom on a walking frame on Thursday to face charges of helping to send more than 3,000 people to their deaths in a Nazi concentration camp during World War Two.

Prosecutors say Josef S, a member of the Nazi party's paramilitary SS, contributed to the deaths of 3,518 people at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp by regularly standing guard in the watchtower between 1942 and 1945.