German prosecutors have recommended a five-year prison sentence for a 101-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, the oldest person charged with complicity in war crimes during the Holocaust.
Josef Sch tz pleaded not guilty, disputing any involvement in the murders of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945. prosecutors in Brandenburg state said on Tuesday that he knowingly and willingly participated in the crimes as a guard at the camp.
More than 200,000 people, including Jews, Roma, regime opponents and gay people, were detained at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1936 and 1945. Hundreds of thousands died in forced labour, murder, medical experiments, hunger or disease before the camp was liberated by Soviet troops, according to the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum.
Schitz denied he had any knowledge of what happened there and insisted he had done absolutely nothing. The allegations against him include aiding and abetting the execution by firing squad of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942 and murder of prisoners using the poison gas Zyklon B Sch tz remained at liberty during the trial. He is very unlikely to be put behind bars if convicted.
Thomas Walther, who represents civil plaintiffs, said the trial was important even at this late date. It is important to set an example. After decades of errors, the very careful procedure shows that German justice has learned something. German prosecutors are trying to bring the last remaining Nazi perpetrators to justice after the Second World War. The conviction of former guard John Demjanjuk in 2011 on the basis that he served as part of Hitler's killing machine paved the way for several of these twilight justice cases.
Since then, the courts have handed down several guilty verdicts on those grounds rather than for murders or atrocities directly linked to the accused. Among those brought to justice were Oskar Gr ning, an accountant at Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard at Auschwitz. Both were convicted of complicity in mass murder at the age of 94, but died before they could be imprisoned.
Bruno Dey, a former SS guard, was found guilty in 2020 at the age of 93 and given a two-year suspended sentence.
In the northern German town of Itzehoe, a 96-year-old former secretary in a Nazi death camp is being tried for complicity in murder. She fled before the start of her trial, but was caught several hours later.
In 2021, Sch tz's trial began, but several hearings had to be postponed because of his health.