German Court Convicts 101-Year-Old Former Nazi Camp Guard

A German court sentenced a 101-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard to five years in prison on Tuesday on charges of being an accessory to over 3,500 deaths at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

The court identified the man only as Joseph S. to comply with Germany’s strict privacy laws.

German authorities were able to determine that Joseph S. worked at Sachsenhausen by going through old camp records returned to Moscow by the Soviet Union’s Red Army, the New York Times reported. Mr. S. had worked at the camp from 1942 to 1945.

The Sachsenhausen camp, located north of Berlin, primarily interned over 200,000 people at the camp from 1936 to 1945, according to a German government website. By 1944, most detainees were political prisoners of war from either the Soviet Union or Poland.

Scholars believe the estimated number of those who perished at the camp to be between 40,000 to 50,000, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Medical experimentations, shootings, hangings, and gassing were all believed to have been performed at Sachsenhausen.

A prosecutor with the German government involved in Mr. S.’s case stated that there was no statute of limitations for murder, the Times noted.

During sentencing, Judge Udo Lechtermann told Mr. S that by virtue of being a guard he had been an accomplice to the crimes that took place in the camp.

“You willingly supported this mass extermination with your activity,” Lechtermann stated, per the AP. “You watched deported people being cruelly tortured and murdered there every day for three years.”

During the closing arguments, Mr. S, who was born in Lithuania but is ethnically German, denied having worked at the camp, claiming that he worked as a farmer during the war.

“I don’t even know what I am supposed to have done,” the 101-year-old said to the judge on Monday, per the Times. “I have nothing to do with it.”

Mr. S.’s lawyer had declared before sentencing that he would appeal if convicted. It is unlikely the ex-guard will spend any time in prison due to his age, the Guardian reported.

As most accomplices associated with Nazi-era crimes age out, the German government is trying to prosecute as many suspected war criminals as possible.

As Breitbart News reported in 2018, then-President Donald Trump deported a former Nazi security guard from his Queens home in New York to Germany. Jakiw Palji, who has since died, had fraudulently become an American citizen after immigrating from Germany after the war, the Trump administration stated at the time.

You can follow Ethan Letkeman on Twitter at @EthanLetkeman.