The centenarian, identified by local media outlets as Josef S. , covers his face as he arrives at court. ADAM BERRY/AFP via Getty Images A 101-year-old man was convicted of aiding in 3,518 murders while he was a Nazi camp guard.
On Tuesday, he was sentenced to five years in prison by the Neuruppin Regional Court. He claimed to have been a farm laborer, but the court said photos and documents showed otherwise. A 101-year-old man was convicted on Tuesday of aiding and abetting in the murders of more than 3,500 people while serving as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust.
According to local media reports, the Neuruppin Regional Court in Germany found the man guilty of 3,518 counts of accessory to murder over killings that took place between January 1942 to February 1945. The man denied working as a Schutzstaffel (SS) guard in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, just north of Berlin, per the German newspaper Welt. The court did not name the man due to Germany’s privacy laws, but several local outlets identified the man as Josef S.
According to the Associated Press, the man claimed that he worked as a farm laborer in northeastern Germany during World War II, but the court said the prosecution had proven that he was the guard in question. Per Welt, the prosecution had presented the court with photos, documents, and SS personnel records matching his personal details. The evidence showed that he had led prisoners to gas chambers or to their executions, but didn’t prove whether or not he took part in the act of killing them, the outlet reported.
During the case, a historian detailed the prisoners’ dismal conditions at Sachsenhausen, and 16 joint plaintiffs, including 10 Holocaust survivors, were also involved in the proceedings, according to the German outlet Deutsche Welle (DW). Some of the centenarian’s crimes include aiding and abetting the shooting of Soviet prisoners of war, aiding and abetting the killing of prisoners with poison gas, and the “creation and maintenance of hostile conditions” that led to thousands of deaths, per DW. Prosecutors said that as an SS guard, the man had “knowingly and willingly” assisted in the murders, the outlet reported.
“These are crimes against humanity that no civilized society can tolerate,” said presiding judge Udo Lechtermann, according to the outlet. “There are places you can’t stay and things you can’t do. If you had known that, you wouldn’t be here today.
” A court spokesperson told CNN that the trial process was complicated because the murders happened many years ago. “It was extraordinarily difficult to find an appropriate punishment because the acts took place a very long time ago, and the perpetrator is already very old. All of this had a mitigating effect on the sentence,” the spokesperson told the outlet.
During his sentencing, the man kept his face covered with a folder. More than 200,000 people were held in Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945. Thousands at the camp died due to hunger, disease, forced labor, executions, and mistreatment.
As Russian forces approached Orianenburg towards the end of World War II, the SS cleared Sachsenhausen by ordering 33,000 inmates, including women and children, to march northwest for days. Read the original article on Insider.
From: insider
URL: https://www.insider.com/101-year-man-gets-5-years-prison-serving-nazi-guard-2022-6
