Enlarge image
Defendant in the district court of Neuruppin (photo from January 28)
Photo: Monika Skolimowska / dpa
A 101-year-old former concentration camp guard has been sentenced to five years in prison for being an accessory to murder in more than 3,500 cases.
The court came to the conclusion that Josef S. had been deployed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for three years.
The accused "willingly supported the mass extermination" with his guard work, said the presiding judge Udo Lechtermann.
With the sentence, the judges followed the request of the public prosecutor's office.
The prosecution had accused S. of being an accessory to murder in more than 3,500 cases.
Accordingly, between 1942 and 1945 he is said to have "knowingly and willingly" participated in the murder of camp inmates.
He is said to have belonged to the guard battalion of the concentration camp, in which the SS had stationed a large contingent, until 1945.
Defense demanded acquittal
The defense had asked for an acquittal.
In the trial before the Neuruppin district court, the man had denied to the last that he had been a guard in the concentration camp.
The 101-year-old had stated that he had worked as a farm hand near Pasewalk in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania at the time in question.
However, the public prosecutor's office based their indictment on documents relating to an SS guard with the man's name, date of birth and place of birth, as well as other documents.
200,000 prisoners and tens of thousands dead
Between the time it was built and the end of the Second World War in 1945, more than 200,000 people were imprisoned in the concentration camp, which was set up in the summer of 1936 by prisoners from the Emsland camps - among them were political opponents of the Nazi regime and members of the Nazis National Socialists persecuted groups such as Jews and Sinti and Roma.
Tens of thousands of prisoners died from starvation, disease, forced labour, medical experiments and abuse, or became victims of systematic SS extermination operations.
For organizational reasons, the trial was conducted in a sports hall in Brandenburg/Havel, where the 101-year-old lives.
The elderly man had only limited capacity to stand trial and was only able to take part in the trial for around two and a half hours a day.
fek/AFP/dpa