Five years in prison for a 101-year-old former SS guard, the oldest in the world to be accused of Nazi crimes

Josef Schuetz, a 101-year-old former SS guard, was sentenced this Tuesday by a German court to five years in prison for complicity in the murder of 3,518 prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, near Berlin, the media reported.

According to Udo Lechtermann, the president, the man, guard of a concentration camp between 1942 and 1945, “consciously advocated mass extermination” in carrying out their duties.

The prosecutor had asked for five years of imprisonment for the accused, while the lawyer Thomas Walther, representing the civil party, had asked for a prison sentence of several years, not less than five.

They had two other representatives of the civil party asked for a guilty verdictwithout naming a specific sanction.

Defense attorney Stefan Waterkamp asked for the defendant to be acquitted and referred to Supreme Court case law arguing that the mere fact of having worked as a guard in a concentration camp is not sufficient grounds for a conviction.

He added it further there is no evidence of concrete acts on the complicity of his client.

The oldest in the world accused of Nazi crimes

“At 101, it’s about the oldest defendant in German historyso I ask for his acquittal, “said Stefan Waterkamp.” We don’t have a photo of him in SS uniform “but only” clues “to his possible activity in Sachsenhausen, he said.

The prosecution also referred to Supreme Court jurisprudence, according to which no concrete acts must be proven; the “promoting effect” which generally derives from guarding is sufficient.

Schuetz completely denied before the Neuruppin provincial court that he was a guardian in Sachsenhausen, he said that in those years he worked as a farm worker in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and that He did not know what acts were charged to himwith whom he said he had nothing to do.

“I don’t know why I’m here. I’m telling the truth. I have nothing to do with the police or the army, everything that has been said is false,” the defendant said simply, in a trembling voice.

The indictment, for its part, is based on extensive documentation with the defendant’s name, date and place of birth, as well as other documents.

For organizational reasons, the trial did not take place in Neuruppin, but in Brandenburg an der Havel, where the old man resides, and had to be Suspended several times for health reasons of the accused.

His lawyer had already announced that he would appeal the sentence in the event of a prison sentence.

Of 200,000 prisoners were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp between 1936 and 1945.

Tens of thousands died of hunger, disease, forced labor, medical experiments and mistreatment, victims of the systematic extermination actions of the SS.

Source: EFE and AFP