From the BBC:
“Nazi camp
guard, 101, given five years for aiding murder”
(Former Nazi
concentration camp guard Josef S (R) hides his face with a folder as he arrives
on June 28, 2022 at a gym used as a makeshift courtroom in Brandenburg an der
Havel, eastern Germany, where his verdict was spoken)
A former Nazi
concentration camp guard identified as Josef S has been given a five-year jail
term for assisting in the murder of thousands of prisoners at Sachsenhausen
near Berlin. The oldest Nazi criminal ever to stand trial in a German court, he
had always denied being an SS guard at the camp. He was found guilty of aiding
and abetting the murders of 3,518 people. He was complicit in the shooting of
Soviet prisoners of war and the murder of others with Zyklon B gas. The defence
had called for his acquittal and is set to appeal against the prison sentence.
Tens of
thousands of people died at Sachsenhausen during World War Two from starvation,
forced labour, medical experiments and murder by the SS. More than 200,000
people were imprisoned there, including political prisoners as well as Jews,
Roma and Sinti (Gypsies). "I don't know why I'm sitting here in the sin
bin. I really had nothing to do with it," Josef S said in his closing
statement on the eve of the verdict in Brandenburg an der Havel.
Judge Udo
Lechtermann told him that despite his claims to the contrary the court had
found that he had worked at the concentration camp for around three years from
1942. "You willingly supported this mass extermination through your
occupation," he said. Putting Nazi camp guards on trial only became
possible in 2011, when ex-SS guard John Demjanjuk was found guilty. That
verdict prompted a search for individuals who were still alive. Four years
later, the so-called "bookkeeper of Auschwitz", Oskar Gröning, was
given a jail term. And a 97-year-old former concentration camp secretary is
currently on trial in northern Germany.
Josef S is not
fully identified in Germany because of privacy conventions. Although his name
and birth details were given on the documents of an SS guard, he claimed he had
not been at the camp and worked instead as a farm labourer. He is unlikely to
serve any of his sentence as Germany's highest court will first have to rule
whether to allow his appeal, and that will take several months.
^ In case you
were thinking: "Why do I post things about World War 2 and the Holocaust
77 years after it ended?"
This is one
reason why. The murderers are still out there. The other reason: Neo-Nazis and
Nazi-wannabes like Putin are using the same methods to make history repeat
itself.
Even if he
doesn’t spend 1 night in prison at least the world will know he is a Nazi and
he will die knowing the world knows he is a Nazi. ^
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