German court sentences ex-SS camp guard, aged 101, to five years in jail

One-hundred-and-one year old former security guard at Sachsenhausen concentration camp is seen in courtroom just before his trial verdict at Landgericht Neuruppin, Brandenburg, Germany, 28 June, 2022.

On Tuesday (28 June), a German court sentenced a former SS Guard to five years imprisonment for helping in the murder of around 3,500 people at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This brought an end to one of the most recent Nazi trials in Germany.

Josef S. was a paramilitary SS member who, according to the prosecution, contributed to the death of 3,518 people at Sachsenhausen camp north of Berlin by standing guard in the watchtower from 1942 to 1945.

The trial lasted nearly nine months because doctors said that the man, whose full identity was withheld due to German trial reporting rules had not been disclosed, was only partially fit for trial. Sessions were limited to two hours per day.

Some Sachsenhausen internees were executed with Zyklon B, the same poison gas used in other extermination camps in which millions of Jews died during the Holocaust.

Sachsenhausen was home to mainly political prisoners from Europe and Soviet prisoners of war, as well as some Jews.

In recent years, a number of charges have been brought against ex-guards at concentration camps for World War Two crimes versus humanity. A former camp secretary fled the scene on September 2, the day before her trial began, but was captured by police just hours later.

These prosecutions were made possible by a 2011 court ruling that stated that anyone who contributed in indirect ways to wartime murders without triggering a trigger or giving an instruction could be held criminally responsible.

Stefan Waterkamp, a defence lawyer, said that his client would appeal Tuesday’s ruling and that a higher Court would decide if "general guard without concrete participation" was sufficient to warrant such a verdict.

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