Joseph Schuetz arrived with foot support for the proceedings.
Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany:
A 100-year-old former concentration camp guard became the oldest person to be tried for Nazi-era crimes in Germany as he appeared before court on Thursday on charges of complicity in a mass murder.
The suspect, Josef Schuetz, is accused of “willfully and voluntarily” aiding in the murder of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.
Charges against him include “aiding and abetting the execution by firing squad of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942” and the killing of prisoners “using the poisonous gas Zyclone B”.
More than seven decades after World War II, German prosecutors are racing to bring the last surviving Nazi criminals to justice, and in recent years have focused more on lower-level Nazi workers.
The case comes a week after a 96-year-old German woman, who was a secretary in a Nazi death camp, dramatically fled before the start of her trial, but was caught several hours later.
He has also been charged with involvement in the murder. His trial will resume on October 19.
Despite his advanced age, a medical evaluation in August found that Schuetz was fit to face trial, although the Neureuppin court would limit his hearing to a few hours a day.
Schuetz arrived with a walking aid for proceedings held in a sports hall, noting the overwhelming interest in the case. The trial will run till the beginning of January.
A spokesman for the court said, “He is not accused of shooting anyone in particular, but of contributing to these acts through his work as a guard and having knowledge of such killings in the camp.” Is.”
Thomas Walther, a lawyer representing several camp survivors and relatives of victims in the case, said that even 76 years after the war, such trials were necessary.
“There is no end date for justice,” he told AFP.
One of his clients is 79-year-old Antoine Grumbach, who hopes Schuetz will shed light on the methods used to kill people in the camp, but also that the accused will “say ‘I was wrong, I’m ashamed’. “.
– ‘symbolic’ –
Nazi SS guards worked in the Sachsenhausen camp, which between 1936 and 1945 detained more than 200,000 people, including Jews, Roma, anti-regime and homosexuals.
According to the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum, before the camp was liberated by Soviet troops, tens of thousands of prisoners died from forced labor, murder, medical experiments, hunger or disease.
Bild newspaper reported that little is known about the accused, beyond the fact that he was released from captivity as a prisoner of war in 1947 and went to work as a locksmith in the Brandenburg area. Was.
The file against him was transferred in April 2019 by the central unit probing Nazi crimes to the state of Brandenburg, where he lives, and charges were finally filed on 26 January this year.
Co-plaintiff Christoffel Heizer, 84, told AFP his father was shot dead at the camp in May 1942.
He said, “My mother had received a letter from him on May 3, 1942, before he was shot. When she found out a few days later that she had died, she cried a lot and turned gray almost at once gone,” he said.
The accused’s lawyer, Stephen Waterkamp, said his client has so far “been silent” on the charges against him.
Schuetz remains free during the test. Even if convicted, he is unlikely to be put behind bars given his age.
– Race against time –
Germany has been hunting former Nazi employees since the 2011 conviction of former Guard John Demjanzuk, on the grounds that they acted as part of Hitler’s killing machine, setting a legal precedent.
Since then, courts have delivered many guilty verdicts on those grounds rather than on murders or atrocities directly linked to individual accused.
Late justices included Oscar Groening, an accountant in Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard in Auschwitz.
Both were convicted of involvement in the mass murder at the age of 94, but died before going to prison.
Recently, former SS guard Bruno Dey was found guilty last year aged 93 and given a two-year suspended sentence.
According to the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, prosecutors are investigating eight other cases.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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