A 101-year-old former security guard of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp appears in the courtroom
(Picture: REUTERS)A 101-year-old German man has been sentenced to five years in prison for serving as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp.
The man, who was not identified, served at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during the Second World War.
He received a five-year jail term after being charged with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder at Neuruppin Regional Court on Tuesday. The man had denied working as an SS guard at the camp and aiding the murder of thousands of prisoners.
During the trial, which opened in October, the man claimed he had worked as a farm labourer in the town of Pasewalk in northeastern Germany.
But the court heard he had in fact been working at the Sachsenhausen camp on the outskirts of Berlin between 1942 and 1945 as an enlisted member of the Nazi Party.
“You willingly supported this mass extermination with your activity,” presiding Judge Udo Lechtermann said.
Prosecutors had based their case on documents relating to an SS guard with the man’s name, date and place of birth, as well as other documents.
Under German law, anyone who helped a Nazi camp to function can be prosecuted for accessory to the murders committed there.
For organisational reasons, the trial was held in a gymnasium in Brandenburg/Havel, the 101-year-old’s place of residence. He was only fit to stand trial to a limited extent and could only participate for around two and a half hours each day.
The Sachsenhausen camp was established in 1936 just north of Berlin. It was the first new camp to be constructed after Adolf Hitler gave the SS full control of the Nazi concentration camp system.
More than 200,000 people were held there between 1936 and 1945, with tens of thousands of inmates dying of starvation, disease, forced labour and other causes.
Medical experiments and systematic SS extermination operations, including shootings, hangings and gassing, were also common.
Exact numbers on those killed vary, with upper estimates of some 100,000, though scholars suggest figures of 40,000 to 50,000 are likely more accurate.
Jewish prisoners were singled out at Sachsenhausen for particularly harsh treatment, and most who remained alive by 1942 were sent to the Auschwitz death camp.
