In Judith Meisel’s last image of her mother, Mina, she is standing outside a gas chamber at the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland, awaiting the same fate that befell 65,000 other prisoners there. 
 
 This summer, as she has countless times before, the St. Louis Park resident relived the experience in wrenching detail, but this time for a set of German prosecutors who, aided by Minnesota FBI agents, were racing to bring to justice the few Nazis still alive who can be linked to World War II-era atrocities. 
 
 Now Meisel, 88, knows her assistance paid off: German authorities this month indicted two ex-guards on charges of being accessories to many of the murders at Stutthof, located near what is now the Polish city of Gdansk. 
 
 Under German law, Meisel could join prosecutors as a “co-plaintiff” in the case. 
 
 In June, Meisel stunned the Germans, and her family, when she identified one of the ex-guards, Johann Rehbogen, as a teenage SS officer who taunted her and other female prisoners as they undressed each morning. 
 
 The charges, made possible by new German legal guidance allowing the prosecution of former Nazis who can’t be tied to specific killings, represent a new and vital chapter for survivors like Meisel. 
 
 Holocaust survivor Judy Meisel held a photo of her parents Osser Beker and Mika Beker that was taken around 1938. Judy's mother died in the gas chamber at Stutthof concentration camp on the Baltic coast in late 1944 or early 1945. 
 
 “I understand that the person who has been indicted was a young man at the time,” Meisel said. “Still, the questions he must answer are an important part of this story.” 
 
 How, for example, did he take such a gruesome job at such a young age? What did he think when he watched women and children being killed on an industrial scale? How has he explained his past to his family and friends? 
 
 Meisel awaits any details the 94-year-old Rehbogen can provide, even if it means she must again relive the horror of her years inside the camp. 
 
 “This process of seeking answers and finding justice for my mother gives new meaning to my life,” Meisel said. 
 
 What comes next? 
 
 Prosecutors in Dortmund indicted Rehbogen and Harry Paul Fritz Schulz, 92, on charges stemming from their tenures at the camp from 1942 to 1944. Since 2011, German authorities have been pursuing cases against Nazis whom they believe they can prove helped operate concentration camps during the war. 
 
 A Dortmund prosecutor told the Associated Press this month that both men denied knowing anything about the killings at the camp. 
 
 Meisel’s description of life in the camp — and law enforcement interviews with other Americans identified as Stutthof survivors — are essential for prosecutors to challenge those denials. In June, Meisel instantly recognized a photo of Rehbogen, whom she and other prisoners called “Meydele” for his girlish looks, and said he was among those who taunted and beat prisoners. 
 
 Cornelius Nestler, a German professor and lawyer who has represented Holocaust survivors in similar cases, found Meisel online and connected her with German authorities who weren’t sure how many, if any, Stutthof survivors were still alive. 
 
 Nestler told the Star Tribune in an e-mail that the defendants will have an opportunity to challenge the indictment and will likely be evaluated by medical experts for their fitness to stand trial. Nestler said that the trial could commence next summer if the defendants are deemed healthy enough. 
 
 Meisel, he said, could “take the stand as a witness,” or at least observe the proceedings. 
 
 ‘Important lessons’ 
 
 Meisel’s son, Michael Cohen, said he’s not sure if his mother would travel to Germany or participate in the prosecution from afar. German authorities also named witnesses from Ohio, New Jersey, New York and Florida. 
 
 The charges came as a surprise to the family, Cohen said, and represented a determination not to “simply move aside and forget about” those responsible. 
 
 Cohen, a Minneapolis attorney, said news of the charges brought back new, vivid memories for his mother that include witnessing camp inmates killed by injections administered by Stutthof doctors. Meisel has since spent much of the month thinking of her mother and sister Rachel, who was forced on a death march away from the camp with her in early 1945 that they both escaped. 
 
 Cohen said Meisel has described her mother as a woman of forgiveness, but is still unsure how she would respond to the charges. “She’s very interested in what comes next,” Cohen said this week. 
 
 He also said the wave of emotions has taken its toll on his mother. As an activist, she has told her story to audiences across the country, but in the days since learning of the indictments, Meisel has privately revisited what it meant to be a Stutthof inmate. 
 
 While she still has nightmares, Meisel said she welcomes any chance to tell her story “for the important lessons it teaches about tolerance and racism.” 
 
 She said she cannot forget the message from some of her fellow prisoners: “Don’t let us die without you mentioning what happened to us.” ||||| A former 94-year-old SS guard holds his walking stick at the beginning of a trial in Muenster, Germany, Tuesday, Nov.6, 2018. He is charged of accessory to murder for serving at the Nazis' Stutthof concentration... (Associated Press) 
 
 A former 94-year-old SS guard holds his walking stick at the beginning of a trial in Muenster, Germany, Tuesday, Nov.6, 2018. He is charged of accessory to murder for serving at the Nazis' Stutthof concentration camp. (Guido Kirchner/dpa via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 MUENSTER, Germany (AP) — A 94-year-old former SS enlisted man went on trial Tuesday in Germany, facing hundreds of counts of accessory to murder for alleged crimes committed during the years he served as a guard at the Nazis' Stutthof concentration camp. 
 
 Johann Rehbogen was pushed into the Muenster state court trial in a wheelchair, a wooden cane at his side and briefcase on his lap. He appeared alert and attentive as presiding judge Rainer Brackhane asked him questions, answering in slow, concise sentences. 
 
 Rehbogen is accused of working as a guard at the camp east of Danzig, which is today the Polish city of Gdansk, from June 1942 to about early September 1944. 
 
 There is no evidence linking him to a specific crime, but over 60,000 people were killed at Stutthof and prosecutors argue that as a guard, he was an accessory to at least hundreds of those deaths. 
 
 The retired civil servant showed no reaction as prosecutor Andreas Brendel read the accusations against him, detailing the horrific way prisoners at Stutthof were killed. Some were given lethal injections of gasoline or phenol directly to their hearts, shot or starved. Others were forced outside in winter without clothes until they died of exposure, or put to death in the gas chamber. 
 
 "Anyone who heard the screams from outside the gas chamber would have known that people were fighting for their lives," Brendel said. 
 
 Rehbogen, a former SS Sturmmann — roughly equivalent to the U.S. Army rank of specialist — does not deny serving in the camp during the war, but has told investigators he was unaware of the killings and did not participate in them. 
 
 No pleas are entered in Germany and Andreas Tinkl, one of Rehbogen's attorneys, would not comment on his client's defense. He said Rehbogen would address the court at some point during the trial, which is scheduled into January. 
 
 Rehbogen lives in Borken, near the Dutch border. In deference to his age and health, the trial is being restricted to a maximum of two hours a day, on no more than two non-consecutive days a week. At the same time, because he was under 21 at the time of his alleged crimes, he is being tried in juvenile court and faces a maximum 10 years in prison if convicted. 
 
 Seventeen Stutthof survivors or relatives of victims have joined the trial as co-plaintiffs, but Brendel said it was unclear whether any would testify in person due to their ages. 
 
 In one of several statements read by their attorneys, survivor Judy Meisel remembered being forced by the Germans into a ghetto at age 12, where she said she endured hunger, daily humiliation and terror. 
 
 "But I was not prepared for what came next," said Meisel, who today lives in Minneapolis. "Next came Stutthof and I experienced the unimaginable, the hell organized and executed by the SS." 
 
 Rehbogen, who was given headphones so he could clearly follow the testimony, showed no reaction as Meisel said the last time she saw her mother, they were both standing among a group of naked women about to be forced into the gas chamber, before she herself was able to break away. 
 
 "Stutthof was organized mass murder through the SS, made possible through the help of the guards," she said. 
 
 Ben Cohen, Meisel's grandson who came from New York to attend the trial, said hearing her statement with one of her former captors in the same room was both important and moving. 
 
 "I know her story so well it is emotional every time I hear it, but it takes on more importance than my own emotions now," he said. 
 
 The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which helped locate Stutthof survivors for the case, stressed that even more than 70 years after the end of World War II it is not too late to pursue justice. 
 
 "The passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of Holocaust perpetrators and old age should not afford protection to those who committed such heinous crimes," said the center's head Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff. 
 
 Even though the number of suspects is dwindling, the special federal prosecutor's office that investigates Nazi war crimes still has multiple cases ongoing. 
 
 The legal reasoning that being a camp guard is itself enough to be found guilty of accessory to murder, even without specific evidence of a crime, was first used successfully against former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk in 2011. 
 
 Demjanjuk was convicted on allegations he served as a Sobibor death camp guard. He denied the accusation and died before his appeal could be heard. 
 
 The 2015 conviction of former Auschwitz guard Oskar Groening using the same argument, however, was upheld by Germany's top criminal court on appeal. 
 
 The Stutthof case is the first use of this reasoning for a concentration camp guard instead of a death camp guard. But prosecutors have expressed confidence it can be applied, since tens of thousands of people were killed in Stutthof even though its sole purpose was not murder. 
 
 Stutthof was established in 1939 and was initially used as the main collection point for Jews and non-Jewish Poles removed from nearby Danzig. 
 
 From about 1940, it was used as a so-called "work education camp" where forced laborers, primarily Polish and Soviet citizens, were sent to serve sentences and often died. Others incarcerated there included criminals, political prisoners, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses. 
 
 From mid-1944, it was filled with tens of thousands of Jews from ghettos being cleared by the Nazis in the Baltics as well as from Auschwitz, and thousands of Polish civilians swept up in the brutal suppression of the Warsaw uprising.
– Judith Meisel says that when she was a teenager in the Stutthof concentration camp in western Poland, other prisoners told her: "Don't let us die without you mentioning what happened to us." The 88-year-old Minnesota resident has not forgotten: Her testimony helped German authorities indict two former guards from the camp where 65,000 people, including Meisel's mother, died, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. She identified one former guard, 94-year-old Johann Rehbogen, as the young SS officer who would taunt female prisoners as they undressed. Prosecutors say the men can't be tied to specific murders, but their work as guards made the killings possible. Meisel—who escaped along with her sister when inmates were sent on a "death march" away from the camp in 1945—says she is willing to relive her horrific experiences to help prosecutors. "This process of seeking answers and finding justice for my mother gives new meaning to my life," she says. The two former guards have been charged as accessories to murder, the AP reports. They deny any knowledge of killings at the camp, where thousands were starved to death or froze. Prosecutors say prisoners were also gassed to death, shot, and killed with lethal injections. Authorities say Meisel and several other Stutthof survivors in the US could be called as witnesses if the former guards are deemed healthy enough to stand trial. (A pendant found at the Sobibor camp helped reunite a family.)