German prosecutors have charged a 100-year-old man with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder after allegations the man served during the second world war as a Nazi SS guard at a concentration camp.

He is alleged to have worked at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1942 and 1945.

The man's name has not been released in line with Germany privacy laws, but Cyrill Klement, the lead investigator, believes that the man was an enlisted member of the Nazi party's paramilitary wing.

Despite being 100, the man is considered fit enough to stand trial, but accommodations may have to be made to limit how many hours a day the court is in session, according to The Guardian.

“The advanced age of the defendants is no excuse to ignore them and allow them to live in the peace and tranquillity they denied their victims,” Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said.

The case was handed to the Neuruppin office in 2019 by the special federal prosecutors' office in Ludwigsburg, which is tasked with investigating Nazi-era war crimes.

The case against the 100-year-old man relies on a recently set legal precedent in Germany that establishes anyone who helped a Nazi camp function can be prosecuted for accessory to the murders that were committed there.

The court has not yet set a date for the trial.