Prosecutors accused him of being affiliated with Thousands of Jews were killedand political prisoners and other minorities persecuted by the Nazis in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from 1942 to 1945.
“You have willingly supported this genocide with your activity,” a judge told the man on Tuesday, as his verdict was read in a gymnasium in the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, where he lives.
The man, known internationally as Joseph Schweitz And like Josef S. in Germany due to privacy laws, it has He repeatedly denied the allegations He claimed he was an agricultural worker in a different region of the country at the time, according to Deutsche Welle. He was not identified at sentencing hearing.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Schweitz said on the last day of his trial, according to For Agence France-Presse. His lawyer, Stephen Waterkamp, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Post. Watercamp told AFP earlier that he would Appeal of conviction.
According to Deutsche Welle, Schuetz is Try the oldest person ever in Germany for complicity with Nazi crimes during World War II.
as such The Post reported earlierSchwitz’s trial and recent conviction “reflects how law enforcement officials are racing against time to lock down some Holocaust survivors and their families, as more and more Nazi individuals and their victims die of old age.”
Throughout Schwitz’s trial, which began in October and was interrupted several times due to apparently ill health, prosecutors relied on old identity documents to build a case that he was a Nazi guard in Sachsenhausen between 1942 and 1945, during which time they claimed he was a Nazi guard in Sachsenhausen. Help and abet the killing of various groups of prisoners by firing bullets and poisonous gases, according to to Agence France-Presse.
Tens of thousands of people died in Sachsenhausena forced labor and death camp where Jews, Soviet POWs, and other persecuted minorities were shot dead and gas chamber. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops in April 1945.
During his trial, AFP reported that Schweitz said he did not know what was going on in the concentration camp and gave conflicting accounts of his whereabouts during World War II.
“The court came to the conclusion that, contrary to what you claim, you worked in the concentration camp as a guard for about three years,” Judge Udo Lichtermann was quoted by the German news agency (dpa).
A former German court formed in 2011 with a conviction John Demjanjuk91, is accused of being an accomplice in 28,000 murders while working as a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp in Poland.
The court’s decision paved the way for convictions that were largely based on whether the accused had served in the Nazi death camp where the crimes took place. Prosecutors previously had to prove that the accused committed specific crimes against someone – a higher threshold, given the alleged events that took place decades ago. Demjanjuk who Died in 2012He denied that he was a guard.
While elderly people convicted of being ex-Nazis are not usually expected to spend time in prison, some argue That their prosecution and conviction can restore a measure of justice to the descendants of their victims, and ensure that their crimes do not go unacknowledged.
Andrew Jeong contributed to this report.
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