Prosecutors accused him of being an adjunct to the murder of thousands of Jews, political prisoners and different minorities persecuted by the Nazis on the Sachsenhausen focus camp from 1942 to 1945.
“You willingly supported this mass extermination with your activity,” a choose instructed the person Tuesday, as his verdict was learn in a gymnasium in the city of Brandenburg an der Havel, the place he lives.
The man, recognized internationally as Josef Schuetz and as Josef S. in Germany due to privateness legal guidelines, has repeatedly denied the allegations and claimed he was an agricultural laborer in a unique space of the nation on the time, in accordance to Deutsche Welle. He was not recognized at his sentencing listening to.
“I don’t know why I am here,” Schuetz stated on the final day of his trial Monday, according to Agence-France Presse. His lawyer, Stefan Waterkamp, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from The Washington Post. Waterkamp beforehand instructed AFP he would appeal a guilty verdict.
According to Deutsche Welle, Schuetz is the oldest person ever tried in Germany for complicity with Nazi crimes throughout World War II.
As The Post has previously reported, Schuetz’s trial and up to date conviction “reflects how law enforcement officials are racing against time to bring some closure for elderly Holocaust survivors and their families, as more and more Nazi personnel and their victims die in old age.”
Throughout Schuetz’s trial, which started in October and has been paused a number of instances due to his obvious unwell well being, prosecutors relied on previous identification paperwork to construct a case that he was a Nazi guard at Sachsenhausen between 1942 and 1945, throughout which era they alleged he aided and abetted the homicide of various teams of prisoners by firing squad and poison gasoline, according to AFP.
Tens of hundreds of individuals died at Sachsenhausen, a compelled labor and dying camp the place Jews, Soviet prisoners of struggle and different persecuted minorities have been killed by shooting and gasoline chamber. The camp was liberated by Soviet forces in April 1945.
Schuetz all through his trial stated he didn’t know what was happening in the focus camp and gave conflicting accounts of his whereabouts throughout World War II, AFP reported.
“The court has come to the conclusion that, contrary to what you claim, you worked in the concentration camp as a guard for about three years,” presiding choose Udo Lechtermann instructed Schuetz, in accordance to the German information company dpa.
A German court docket set a precedent in 2011 with the conviction of John Demjanjuk, a 91-year-old accused of being an adjunct to 28,000 murders whereas working as a guard on the Sobibor focus camp in Poland.
The court docket’s resolution paved the best way for convictions that largely rested on whether or not the defendant had served at a Nazi dying camp the place crimes had taken place. Prosecutors beforehand had to show the accused had dedicated particular crimes towards somebody — a better threshold, given the alleged occasions happened a long time in the past. Demjanjuk, who died in 2012, denied he had been a guard.
While aged folks convicted of being former Nazis will not be sometimes anticipated to serve time in prison, some argue that prosecuting and convicting them can restore a measure of justice to descendants of their victims, and guarantee their crimes don’t go unacknowledged.
Andrew Jeong contributed to this report.
