Josef Schütz, 101, the oldest person ever to be charged with Nazi crimes in court, denied on Monday, the penultimate day of his trial, that he was a guard in a German concentration camp during World War II.
Schutz, whose trial began in October, is accused of “complicating” the murder of 3,518 prisoners while working in the Sachsenhausen camp in north Berlin between 1942 and 1945, according to the indictment. In May, the prosecution sought a five-year prison sentence.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” said the accused in a shaky voice.
Wearing a gray T-shirt and pajama pants, he wheeled into the courtroom at Brandenburg Havel, 70 kilometers west of Berlin.
Earlier, he listened without reaction to the defenses of his lawyer, who, unsurprisingly, wanted his acquittal.
“At 101, he is one of the oldest defendants in German history, so I want his acquittal,” said lawyer Stefan Waterkamp. “We don’t have a photograph of him in SS uniform,” he said, only “clues” to his possible activity in Sachsenhausen.
“As early as 1973 investigators knew about him but did not prosecute him. It was possible to hear witnesses at the time, but now they are all dead or they cannot speak,” he added.
“The danger of this court will be to try to right the mistakes of the previous generation of judges,” Waterkamp said.
Antoine Grumbach, 80, said: “This person is too old, he doesn’t want to remember anymore. It’s a form of defence. But it’s not too serious because for me it’s not about putting a century old man in jail.” His father, who joined the resistance in France, died in Sachsenhausen, he told AFP.
“The most important thing is that we can collect and show all the documents proving that Sachsenhausen was an experimental extermination camp: all the most brutal methods were invented there and then exported,” he added.
source: Noticias
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