Joseph Schuetz, 101, a former guard at the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen, was sentenced on Tuesday (28th) to five years in prison for participation in war crimes.
The oldest person ever prosecuted for such crimes, the German was charged with involvement in the murder of 3,518 concentration camp prisoners operating in Oranienburg between 1936 and 1945.
According to prosecutors, the former guard “aided and encouraged the execution by shooting of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942 and the murder of prisoners “using Zyklon B poison gas.”
Schuetz was 21 at the time of the crimes and worked in Sachsenhausen from 1942 to 1945.
During the trial, which began in Brandenburg in 2021, the former guard claimed he was “innocent” and even said he “didn’t know what he was doing” there. However, in his testimony to the jury, Schuetz contradicted himself more than once and even went so far as to deny that he was working as a guard at that place – something that was denied by several documents of the time.
The man’s defense has stated that he will appeal the decision, but it is very difficult for Schuetz to go to jail due to his age and health problems, albeit the penalty.
According to official figures, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp took more than 200,000 prisoners during its operation, including Jews, Roma, homosexuals and prisoners of war. Thousands died there of starvation, forced labor, shooting, or murdered in medical experiments. Only at the end of the war, the site was liberated by Soviet troops.
source: Noticias
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