Assisted murder – five years in prison for ex-concentration camp guard (101)

The Chamber therefore concluded that S. had been in the concentration camp for three years. The accused “voluntarily supported the mass extermination” with his surveillance work, judge Udo Lechtermann said. Prosecutors demanded five years in prison. The defense, on the other hand, requested acquittal because it could not be proven that their client had done anything specific with his work in the camp.

The Public Prosecution Service had accused S. of complicity in murder in more than 3,500 cases. Accordingly, he is said to have “knowingly” participated in the murder of camp inmates between 1942 and 1945. He was said to have belonged to the concentration camp guard battalion until 1945, in which the SS had stationed a large contingent.

The suspect protested his innocence
During the trial that began in October last year, the suspect denied having worked in the camp himself. In his last word before the verdict was handed down, Josef S. again protested his innocence.

For organizational reasons, the trial took place in a sports hall in Brandenburg an der Havel, where the 101-year-old lives. The elderly man had only limited capacity to stand trial and was only able to participate in the trial for about two and a half hours a day.

Set up by inmates in the summer of 1936, the concentration camp north of Berlin held more than 200,000 people – including political opponents of the Nazis – between the time of its construction and the end of World War II in 1945. regime and members of the Nazis persecuted National Socialist groups such as Jews and Sinti and Roma. Tens of thousands of prisoners died of starvation, disease, forced labour, medical experimentation and abuse, or became victims of systematic SS destruction operations.