A German court docket has sentenced Josef S. to 5 years in jail for complying to homicide 3,500 prisoners
A 101-year-old man, whom the German authorities consider to have been a guard on the Sachsenhausen Nazi focus camp, will spend the subsequent 5 years behind bars, a court docket within the city of Brandenburg an der Havel dominated on Tuesday.
Josef S. was discovered responsible of aiding and abetting the homicide of over 3,500 prisoners in addition to tried homicide. In meting out the sentence, the judges accommodated the general public prosecutor’s request.
The court docket discovered that the defendant served in a guard battalion stationed on the focus camp from 1942 till 1945. Presiding Choose Udo Lechtermann famous that S. had “willingly supported the mass extermination” of camp prisoners.
Through the course of, protection legal professional Stefan Waterkamp argued his consumer must be acquitted as a result of the prosecutor’s workplace had did not show the defendant’s complicity in anyone specific homicide case.
In response to the German media, 101-year-old Josef S. is the oldest Nazi prison to face trial within the nation.
The person himself had maintained his innocence because the very starting of the method in October 2021. In his final phrases, S. insisted he had not labored on the Sachsenhausen focus camp.
The court docket hearings have been held at a sports activities corridor close to the aged defendant’s place of residence.
The method needed to be suspended a number of occasions because of the man’s well being points.
In response to the indictment, S. was discovered complicit within the execution of inmates, together with Soviet prisoners of battle, by firing squad and toxic fuel. Furthermore, the very circumstances wherein the inmates had been held have been discovered to be life-threatening by the court docket. Nevertheless, the defendant was discovered not responsible of personally murdering any of these individuals.
In response to the data displayed on the memorial at Sachsenhausen, greater than 200,000 individuals went by means of the focus camp between 1936 and 1945. Tens of 1000’s by no means made it out alive, dying of starvation, illness, pressured labor, medical experiments, or systematic extermination.
