Former concentration camp guard, aged 101, found guilty

A 101-YEAR-OLD former concentration camp guard has been sentenced to five years in prison after becoming the oldest person so far to face trial over war crimes committed in the Holocaust.

Josef Schuetz was found guilty to being an accessory to the murder of more than 3,500 prisoners, and an accessory to attempted murder, at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg between 1942 and 1945.

However, he is unlikely to spend time behind bars because of his age.

Felix Klein, Germany’s anti-semitism commissioner, said prosecutors should not celebrate the sentencing as Schuetz “lived undisturbed for so long and the indictment came so late”.

The trial, which began in October, was suspended several times because of Schuetz’s ill health. It was held in a gymnasium in Brandenburg/havel, where Schuetz lives. He took part for about two and a half hours a day.

The Sachsenhausen camp was set up north of Berlin in 1936 as the first site after Adolf Hitler gave the SS control of the Nazi concentration camp system.

The camp’s death count varies, with upper estimates of 100,000, though scholars suggest figures of 40,000 to 50,000 are more accurate. Inmates died of starvation, disease and forced labour as well as from medical experiments and shootings, hangings and gassing.

In March, the posthumous testimony of Leon Schwarzbaum, a 101-year-old Holocaust survivor, was read. It asked the accused “to tell the historical truth”.

Antoine Grumbach, 80, a Holocaust survivor whose father died in the camp, said for him the verdict helped to prove that Sachsenhausen was an “experimental extermination camp”.

Schuetz pleaded not guilty, saying he “did absolutely nothing wrong” and “I don’t know why I am here”. He said he had not worked in the camp, but was an agricultural labourer in Pasewalk, some 75 miles north-east of Sachsenhausen.

Stefan Waterkamp, for Schuetz, said: “As early as 1973, investigators had information about him but did not pursue him.”

However, the public prosecutor said Schuetz “knowingly and willingly” participated in crimes as a guard, citing evidence that shared Schuetz’s name, date and place of birth.

Judge Udo Lechtermann said Schuetz “willingly supported this mass extermination with your work”. Schuetz’s lawyer previously told AFP he intended to appeal in the event of a guilty verdict.