Five years in prison for 101-year-old concentration camp guard

Joseph S. He denied to the end that he had worked at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. However, the Land Court Neuruppin concluded that documents submitted by the prosecution sufficiently proved its role in this camp. So there are documents regarding an SS guard by name, date, and place of birth, as well as other documents.

The trial has concluded that, contrary to your contrasting claims, you have worked for about three years in the concentration camp as a guard,” Justice Board Chairman Udo Lechtermmann said when he handed the verdict. So the accused contributed to the national Socialists' terror and killing machine, and he was aware of it. These are crimes against humanity that no civilized society can tolerate,” said Lechtmann. “There are places you can't stay and things you can't do. If you knew that, you wouldn't be here today. ”

Sachsenhausen concentration camp prisoners in 1938

In the case of the five-year prison sentence, the court followed the prosecutor's request; the defence had demanded a release, or, if, case of sentence, a parole sentence. The lawyer now wants to reverse the verdict.

Joseph S. that helped “consciously and voluntarily” in killing concentration camp prisoners between 1942 and 1945: Fellow in murder, 3518 cases. This, in effect, included helping to execute Soviet prisoners of war and helping to kill prisoners through the use of poisonous gas. The detainees are also said to have lost their lives “by creating and preserving threatening conditions for life”.

The Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, had a special place during the Nazi period: After its construction in 1936, he served as a model for other concentration camps, later the administrative center of the entire concentration camp system, and a training camp for the SS, the main instrument of terror of National Socialists.

More than 200,000 people were arrested in Sachsenhausen. Tens of thousands were shot, killed with gas, died after cruel medical experiments, or simply because of inhumane prison conditions. At the end of April 1945, when the Red Army was approaching Oranienburg, the SS sent more than 300,000 people to <x0m2, during which thousands of other prisoners died.

A surviving prisoner relates

Joseph S. It started in October of last year. One historian presented a detailed report on the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and conditions there. Sixteen civil parties also participated in the trial, including ten survivors of Nazi crimes.

At the end of February of this year, 98-year-old Alfonso Studzinski was interviewed with video. He had arrived in Sachsenhausen in 1940, at the age of 15, as a political prisoner. As a witness, he especially described how other prisoners, in despair, rushed to the barricades of the concentration camp to be killed there by the SS. “Hang was not an option,” said Studizinski. He also spoke of punitive measures such as the hour - long stand in the appeals square, the executions of prisoners from the SS, and the death march from April 21st to May 3, 1945, which ended in liberation.

When the chairman of the Udo Lechtmann Court asked the accused if he still wanted to say something to Alfonso Studizinski after the interrogation ended, Joseph S. responded negatively.

Murder and co-operation in Murder Are Not Prescripted

Attorney General Thomas Will heads the National National National National National National Criminal Explaining Centre in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg. Since its establishment in 1958, this institution has gathered information on preliminary investigations by prosecutors against Nazi criminals. Will also did crucial preparation work for the trial.

Should an elderly man still be brought to trial for facts that in 80 years ago, how much more when he was a “mingranage in a large Nazi killing machine? That's the question Deutsche Welle asked Thomas Will when the trial opened in October. He answered: Absolutely so, especially because the prescription for murder is legally excluded, in the context of mass Nazi crimes. “The objective of the criminal procedure is always to determine individual guilt in criminal law”.

But what could be composed of this individual guilt has changed to legal practice since the trial of former concentration camp guard John Demignuk in 2011. Until then, evidence of direct personal involvement in the murder was considered a condition for prosecution. In the 1960s and 1970s former concentration camp guards appeared in Nazi trials, but only as witnesses. What has changed since 2011, according to Will, “is that the overall conduct of service in a concentration camp during known systematic acts can already serve as the basis for criminal responsibility for the measure of co-operation confirming this findings during trial”

Deminjuk's turning point

Demigninuk was sentenced in 2011 in Munich, at the age of 91, to five years in prison for co-operation in murder in more than 28,000 cases. The decision determined that Demiduk was part of the Nazi extermination machine. Since then, other men have been convicted because according to the court's ruling, they were accomplices in their guard service and they knew that the killings were done systematically or that prisoners were maltreated in order to die (“consciously and voluntarily”.

If those few remaining cases go to trial, it is often related to the negotiating power of very elderly people. Joseph S., who was just sentenced, is now 101 years old and questioned for just a few hours a day during the nine months of the trial. Especially for him, there was a quiet room. So this is probably one of the last cases in which suspects as Nazi criminals should respond to their actions in court.

Antoine Grumbach, whose father was killed in Sachsenhausen as a French resistance fighter, was co-operative in the trial against Joseph S. After announcing the decision, he exclaimed excitedly: “will never forgive”. According to him, no one was obliged to become the SS, every man is responsible for his actions.

His 23-year-old daughter Lily sees above all as the obligation what happened: “for my generation and future generations, if there are no more direct witnesses to this story, it is very important to keep the memory alive”.

Thomas Walther, the civil party attorney, agrees: “Sachsenhausen can always reproduce anywhere in the world” Hence, according to him, <x2 be taken from the beginning” is a permanent task. / DW