[user104658]

Well exactly, and I have a suspicion that this is more about Germany doing some "final bits of putting things right" with the last few scrappy officers they can find alive in order to bookend the war and go forward with a laundered reputation once the war passes out of living memory. I get that there are still a few surviving people from that era but my original point was that, in a couple of decades time, there won't be. That means that Germany only has a few years to squeeze in a few final convictions for brownie points. This guy was barely out of his teens during the war and is now pushing 100... The fact is, there simply aren't any of the real ghouls of WW2 left to convict. They were either caught and tried long ago or they've already lived out their lives free and died.

This guy, if you read the articles, really can't be described as much more than a minor cog in the SS machine. Does that make him an innocent? No, it does sound like he was self-serving and at the very least took advantage of a "privileged" posting even if he is being truthful about not being 100% on board with it. But it does marginally make him little more than a scapegoat for the really awful ones who are long gone.