The German prosecutor’s office today sought a five-year prison sentence for 101-year-old Josef Schütz, who was tried for crimes committed while guarding the Nazi concentration camp in Sachsenhausen, and is the oldest ever tried for Nazi crimes.
The former Waffen SS non-commissioned officer is accused of “complicating” the murder of 3,518 prisoners in the camp north of Berlin between 1942 and 1945.
But if he is found guilty, he has to escape from prison due to his health problems.
Attorney General Cyrill Klement said the evidence was “fully corroborated” and accused him of not only adjusting to camp conditions but making a career out of it.
During the trial, which began in October at the court in Brandenburg-Havel (east), the centenarian claimed that he had never taken responsibility in Sachsenhausen.
“There is no doubt that Schütz works in Sachsenhausen” for the prosecutor. Therefore, he demanded a prison sentence of at least more than three years for participation in the murder stipulated in the German penal code.
Schütz was unimpressed by the announcement. A decision is scheduled for early June.
Unwilling to prosecute all perpetrators of Nazi crimes for years, Germany has expanded investigations over the past decade into camp guards and others who were part of the Nazi machine.
But these judgments of the very old have raised questions about this delayed justice.
The trial of Josef Schütz, who was 21 when the events started, had to be stopped many times due to his health. Among other things, he is suspected of shooting Soviet prisoners and “aiding and abetting” Zyklon B-type “gas murders”.
The Sachsenhausen camp, which was active between 1936 and April 22, 1945, liberated by the Soviets, took 200,000 prisoners, mostly political dissidents, Jews and homosexuals.
Tens of thousands died, mostly from exhaustion from forced labor and harsh living conditions.
source: Noticias
