world War 2: A German news agency DPA reported on Wednesday that the 102-year-old convicted Nazi concentration camp guard had died. He was convicted of more than 3,500 counts of accessory to murder last year for serving as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
The man, whom local media has identified only as Josef S. in accordance with German privacy rules, was sentenced last June to five years in prison but remains free pending appeal.
He denied having served as an SS guard in the Sachsenhausen camp.
But the state court in Neuruppin concluded that documents bearing the man’s name, date and place of birth showed that he was in fact an enlisted member of the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing stationed at the camp on the outskirts of Berlin between 1942 and 1945. .
What happened in Sachsenhausen camp?
tens of thousands prisoners — including Jews, political prisoners, and captured Soviet soldiers — died in the Sachsenhausen camp from hunger, disease, forced labor, and other causes, as well as through medical experiments and systematic executions conducted by the SS.
In announcing the court’s verdict, presiding judge Udo Lechtermann said that the defendant had assisted the murderous system established by the Nazis.
According to a legal precedent established in 2015, anyone who helped a Nazi camp function in Germany could be prosecuted for being an accessory to murders committed there.
“You voluntarily supported this mass destruction with your activity,” Lechtermann said at the time.
“You saw the deportees being brutally tortured and murdered there every day for three years,” he said.
(with AP input)