BERLIN (AP) – A 101-year-old man was convicted in Germany of more than 3,500 homicide cases on Tuesday for serving in the Nazi concentration camp in Sachsenhausen during World War II.
The Neuruppin District Court sentenced him to five years in prison.
The man, identified by local media as Josef S., had denied working as an SS guard in the camp and aiding and abetting the killing of thousands of detainees.
At the trial, which began in October, the centenarian said he had worked as a farm laborer near Pasewalk in northeastern Germany during that period.
However, the court considered it proven that he worked in the camp on the outskirts of Berlin between 1942 and 1945 as a military member of the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, the German news agency dpa reported.
“The court concluded that, contrary to what you claim, you worked in the concentration camp as a guard for about three years,” said presiding judge Udo Lechtermann, according to dpa.  He added that in doing so, the accused had aided in the plot to assassinate and kill the Nazis.
“You have willingly supported this mass extermination with your activity,” Lechtermann said.  “You watched displaced people being severely tortured and killed there every day for three years.”
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.
The five-year prison sentence was in line with the prosecution’s request.
The defendant’s lawyer had asked for acquittal.  Defense attorney Stephen Waterkamp said after the sentence was handed down that he would appeal the verdict, dpa reported.
Germany’s leading Jewish group welcomed the decision.
“Even if the accused is unlikely to serve the full sentence due to his advanced age, the verdict is welcome,” said Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
“The thousands of people who worked in the concentration camps kept the killing machine running.  “It was part of the system, so they have to take responsibility for it.”  “It is bitter that the accused denied his activities at that time until the end and did not show remorse.”
For practical reasons, the trial took place in a gym in Brandenburg / Havel, the 101-year-old’s residence.  The man was only able to stand trial to a limited extent and could only attend the trial for about two and a half hours each day.  The procedure was interrupted several times for reasons of health and hospitalization.
Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi hunter in the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, told the Associated Press that the phrase “sends a message that if you commit such crimes, even decades later, you may be brought to justice.”
“And it is very important because it gives closure to the relatives of the victims,” ​​Zuroff added.  “The fact that these people suddenly feel that their loss is being addressed and that the suffering of their family that they lost in the camps is being addressed is a very important thing.”
However, Zuroff expressed concern that S. could serve only part of the sentence or not at all due to his scheduled appeal and advanced age.
Sachsenhausen was founded in 1936 just north of Berlin as the first new location after Adolf Hitler gave the SS full control of the Nazi concentration camp system.  It was intended to be a model facility and training camp for the Nazi-built labyrinthine network throughout Germany, Austria and the Occupied Territories.
More than 200,000 people were held there between 1936 and 1945. Tens of thousands of inmates died of starvation, disease, forced labor, and other causes, as well as through medical experiments and systematic SS extermination operations, including shootings, hangings, and gas.
The exact numbers for the dead vary, with higher estimates being around 100,000, although researchers suggest that figures from 40,000 to 50,000 are probably more accurate.
In its early years, most prisoners were either political prisoners or criminals, but some included Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals.  The first large group of Jewish prisoners was transferred there in 1938 after the so-called Night of the Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht, an anti-Semitic pogrom.
During the war, Sachsenhausen expanded to include thousands of Soviet prisoners of war – as well as others.
As in other camps, the Jewish prisoners stood out in Sachsenhausen for particularly cruel treatment, and most who survived until 1942 were sent to the Auschwitz death camp.
Sachsenhausen was liberated in April 1945 by the Soviets, who later turned it into their own brutal camp.
Tuesday’s verdict is based on a recent legal precedent in Germany, according to which anyone who helped run a Nazi camp could be prosecuted as an accomplice in the killings there.
In a separate case, a 96-year-old woman was tried in late September in the northern German city of Itzehoe.  The woman, who allegedly worked during the war as secretary to the SS commander at the Stutthof concentration camp, has been charged with more than 11,000 counts of additional murder.