Auschwitz Committee: Most perpetrators remain unmolested

Created: 05/22/2022Updated: 05/22/2022 15:12

Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the Auschwitz Committee, speaks at an event.

© Christoph Soeder/dpa/archive image

Even 77 years after the end of the Second World War, proceedings are still pending in German courts in which the issue of complicity in murder is involved.

The Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, Heubner, now says how he assesses the investigation.

Berlin - The International Auschwitz Committee considers the punishment of crimes committed by the National Socialists to be insufficient, despite ongoing trials.

"The survivors remain outraged and bitter with a view to the German post-war judiciary and the punishment for the crimes in the concentration camps, because the vast majority of perpetrators remained unmolested by the judiciary and were able to live in Germany completely undisturbed," said acting Vice President Christoph Heubner of the German newspaper press agency.

With a view to the trial of a suspected former SS guard in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, he also acknowledged the Neuruppin Regional Court's willingness to investigate.

According to the indictment, the 101-year-old, as an SS guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at the time, is said to have aided and abetted the murder of more than 3,500 prisoners from 1942 to 1945.

The man has so far denied that he worked in the concentration camp.

According to his own statements, he was working as a farmhand near Pasewalk (Mecklenburg-West Pomerania) at the time in question.

The Neuruppin public prosecutor's office bases its charges on documents relating to an SS guard with the man's name, date of birth and place of birth.

She is demanding five years in prison for the accused.

He had been resettled from Lithuania to Germany in 1941 as a so-called Volksdeutscher.

According to the committee vice-president, the prosecutor's demand for a sentence is symbolic "in view of what happened in Sachsenhausen and in which the accused more than obviously played a part".

In view of the alleged aiding and abetting in the murder of more than 3,500 prisoners, it was "disproportionate, low and painful for the survivors and their relatives".

"The survivors have always pointed out that even the smallest warden was the master of their life and death every minute in the camp and that even the smallest warden was indispensable in the great wheel of destruction and terror."

The plea by co-plaintiff lawyer Thomas Walther is expected in the process this Monday.

"After more than 30 days of negotiations over the past six months with almost 80 hours of taking evidence, we are in several respects the focus of a lesson on crime, history, politics, justice and the history of justice," said Walther before his plea for the co-plaintiffs he represented.

He considers the sentence demanded by the senior public prosecutor to be “quite appropriate”.

For organizational reasons, the procedure takes place in a sports hall in Brandenburg/Havel.

According to the current schedule, the defense could plead on June 1st, the verdict could come on June 2nd.

A trial against a suspected former secretary in the Stutthof concentration camp is currently under way in the Itzehoe district court.

The 96-year-old woman is accused of being an accessory to murder in more than 11,000 counts.

Since the trial against the former concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk for being an accessory to the murder of at least 28,060 Jews in the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943, the judiciary no longer insists on the often impossible proof of individual guilt in similar trials.

dpa