Dortmund, Germany - Police searched the home of an 89-year-old German alleged to have massacred an estimated 60 Jewish prisoners in Austria near the end of World War II, prosecutors said Wednesday.

A statement said the investigators were studying a number of documents seized from the home of the man in the west German city of Duisburg.

The man, who has not been indicted, declined to answer questions posed by the investigators, the statement said.

He is alleged to have been among a detail of Hitler's private army, the Waffen SS, said to have gunned down the 60 Hungarian Jewish slave labourers on March 29, 1945.

The case came to light when an Austrian university student interested in the massacre near Deutsch Schuetzen located the 89-year-old by simply looking up his name in a German telephone directory.

A prosecutor responsible for war crimes was sent to the scene of the atrocity in December to gather evidence and interview three former Hitler Youth members as witnesses. (dpa)