A 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard is to go on trial in Germany over the murder of 170,000 people during the second world war, the Guardian reports.

Former SS Sgt Reinhold Hanning served in the death camp when hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were gassed. He is charged with being an accessory to their murder.

Hanning maintains he served in a part of the Auschwitz complex where no gassings were taking place.

Prosecutors argue that all guards helped the camp function, and that during the so-called “Hungarian action” in 1944 almost all were called upon to help deal with the vast numbers of people arriving at the complex in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Leon Schwarzbaum, a 94-year-old Auschwitz survivor from Berlin, is scheduled to testify on Thursday, Feb 11, the opening day of the trial in the west German city of Detmold.

It is unclear whether Hanning will first make a statement.