A 101-year-old man has been convicted of 3,518 counts of complicity in murder for service in the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen during World War II.
The district court in Neuruppin sentenced him to five years in prison.
The man, who lives in the state of Brandenburg and has not been identified, has denied working as an SS guard at the camp and helping and assisting in the killing of thousands of prisoners. H pleaded not guilty again on Monday, just before his sentencing on Tuesday.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said again at the end of the meeting. During cross-examination, the defendant had previously said he had done “absolutely nothing”. He denied knowing about the massive crimes committed in Sachsenhausen, saying he was an agricultural worker at the time.
Holocaust survivor Leon Schwarzbaum holds photo in courtroom during trial
(Reuters)
Prosecutors allege that he “knowingly and intentionally” participated in the crimes as a camp guard. They took out documents for a security guard with the same name, date of birth and place of birth as the man, as well as other papers.
The court found it proven that he had worked in the camp on the outskirts of Berlin between 1942 and 1945 as an enrolled member of the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing, the German news agency dpa reported.
“The court concluded that, contrary to what you claim, you worked in the concentration camp as a security guard for about three years,” said Presiding Judge Udo Lechterman, adding that the defendant had assisted in the terror and killing machines of the Nazis.
“You have readily supported this mass destruction with your activities,” Mr Lechtermann said.
Prosecutors based their case on documents related to an SS security guard with the man’s name, date and place of birth, as well as other documents.
For organizational reasons, the trial took place at a high school in Brandenburg / Havel, the residence of the 101-year-old.
The man was fit to stand trial only to a limited extent and could only participate in the trial for about two and a half hours each day. The trial was interrupted several times due to health reasons and a hospital stay.
Charges against him include participation in the “execution by shooting of Soviet prisoners of war in 194” and the deployment of “poison gas Cyclone B” in the gas chambers of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial in Germany
(Omer Messenger / Getty Images)
He has been on trial since October in the district court in Neuruppin. The hearings in the case were held in the nearby eastern city of Brandenburg, near the man’s home. More than 200,000 people – mostly Jews but also members of the Roma community, opponents of the regime and gays – were imprisoned in Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945 by the Nazis.
Tens of thousands have died from forced labor or unethical medical experiments, starvation and disease, in addition to the acts of mass murder that took place there.
Sachsenhausen was liberated in April 1945 by the Soviets, who turned it into their own brutal camp.
Tuesday’s sentence is based on a recent legal precedent in Germany, which found that anyone who helped run a Nazi camp could be tried for complicity in the killings there.
Add Comment