The oldest person charged with Nazi crimes, 101-year-old German Josef Schütz, was sentenced today to five years in prison for complicity in the murder of thousands as a guard in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.
A former petty officer in the Waffen SS, a Nazi combat unit at the time of his trial, Schütz was convicted of “complicity” in the murder of 3,518 prisoners in the northern camp of Sachsenhausen between 1942 and 1945. Berlin.
“Mr. Schütz, you played an active role for three years in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where you were complicit in the mass killings,” said Udo Lechtermann, the presiding judge.
The judge was present at the scene, stating that the suspect supported the actions carried out in the concentration camp.
The judge said, “All those who wanted to escape from the camp were shot. That’s why every guard in the camp took an active part in the murders.”
While studying the sentence exceeding three years stipulated in German law in cases of participation in murder, the accused remained emotionless.
“I’m ready,” said Schütz, when he was taken to the courtroom hours ago.
The defense lawyer announced that he would appeal if a very heavy sentence was given, which would delay the execution of the sentence until the beginning of 2023. It is unlikely that he will be arrested during the liberation process.
At no point in the nearly 30 hearings of the case did the defendant show the slightest sign of remorse.
On Monday, before the end of the trial, he again denied any responsibility.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” said the accused in a shaky voice.
conflicting reports
Josef Schütz has offered several, sometimes contradictory, accounts of his past. He recently claimed that he left Lithuania at the start of the Second World War for Germany, where he would work as a farm worker throughout the conflict.
“I cut down and planted trees,” he said after swearing that he never wore a “work suit”, not a German uniform.
The version is contested by several historical documents that mention his name, date and place of birth, among other data, and show that he actually worked in the “Totenkopf” section from late 1942 to early 1945. Waffen-SS. .
After the war he was transferred to a prison camp in Russia and then moved to the Brandenburg region near Berlin.
He was a farmer in turn, then a locksmith, and was never bothered by the authorities.
At the age of 21, at the beginning of the alleged facts, Schütz was accused, among other things, of shooting Soviet prisoners, “aiding and abetting systematic assassinations” by Zyklon B gas, and “detaining prisoners in hostile conditions.”
Between its opening in 1936 and its liberation by the Soviets on April 22, 1945, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp had about 200,000 prisoners, mainly political dissidents, Jews and homosexuals.
Tens of thousands died, mainly victims of forced labor and brutal detention conditions.
Germany has expanded its investigations over the past 10 years, after decades of showing its reluctance to prosecute all perpetrators of Nazi crimes.
Concentration camp guards and other practitioners of the Nazi machine could be prosecuted for complicity in the murder.
source: Noticias
[author_name]
