In the Hamburg trial of a former security guard in the Stutthof concentration camp, a US witness hugged the 93-year-old defendant. Following his testimony as a witness and co-plaintiff, 76-year-old Moshe Peter Loth approached the accused in a wheelchair. Turning to the audience, he said, "Watch everyone, I'll forgive him." Then the two men hugged each other. After the trial, Loth said they both cried.
The accused is accused of murder in 5230 cases. Between 9 August 1944 and 26 April 1945, he was said to have supported "the insidious and cruel killing of Jewish prisoners in particular" as an SS guard. It was part of his duties to prevent the flight, revolt and liberation of prisoners, according to the indictment.
The witness living in Florida had testified that his Jewish mother had been arrested on March 1, 1943, when she was three months pregnant with him. She gave birth to him in captivity. In 1944 both had been transferred to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. At the end of the war he was separated from his mother. After his childhood and adolescence in Poland, he came to Germany via Germany.
Christian Charisius / AFP
The accused SS guard is covering his face
During the Stutthof trial, people in the courthouse are in fact prohibited from contacting the defendant and his family. "Any excitement for him is particularly dangerous to health," his defender had said before the trial. "If too many people are in the room, it could be that it adversely affects him."
These and other lawsuits against former SS guards were triggered by a change in the legal concept. German prosecutors and courts have now come to the view that supportive activities such as guard services in the legal sense are to be regarded as aiding and abetting murder. In the past, only those offenders who held high positions in the Nazi hierarchy or directly participated in killings were prosecuted.
In the video (2018): Hunt for Nazi criminals - A 95-year-old in front of the juvenile judge
DPA