German court to try 100-year-old man as accomplice to 3,518 dead in Nazi camp

A German court will try from next October a centenary former SS guard accused of complicity in the murder of 3,518 prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, near Berlin, report today the Sunday edition of the daily newspaper “Welt”.

The Neuruppin Provincial Court upheld the charge brought by the prosecution last February against this person, who has not been identified, for complicity in the murders of prisoners between January 1942 and August 1944 and between December 1944 and February 1945 in during its activity. as a concentration camp guard.

Centennial must appear in court for two to two and a half hours a dayits chairman, Frank Stark, told “Welt”.

Historian Stéphanie Bohra, scientific collaborator of the Berlin Topography of Terror documentation center, celebrated the imminent opening of the process by stressing that “murder does not prescribe “Therefore, the older ones must also be brought to justice.

“It is about clearing up the crimes and the former detainees have the opportunity to tell what happened there.“, He added.

Because the lawyer Thomas Walther, who for years represented the civil party in the last trials against Nazism and will also participate in that of Neuruppin, considers this trial necessary.

“Sachsenhausen was for the scene of the Nazi dome, at the gates of Berlin, of his illusion of control over life and death“, He declared, adding that many of those who constitute the civil party” are the same age as the accused and hope that justice will be done “.

The accused, who was not appointed in accordance with German suspect media laws, is said to have worked as a camp warden from 1942 to 1945 in Sachsenhausen.

About 200,000 prisoners were held in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, of which about 20,000 were killed.

Although the number of alleged Nazi crimes is declining, prosecutors continue to try to bring individuals to justice.

Landmark conviction in 2011 paved the way for more prosecutionsbecause for the first time, working in a concentration camp was considered a ground for guilt without proof of a specific crime.

The horrors of Sachsenhausen

The Sachsenhausen Concentration and Extermination Camp was built on the outskirts of Berlin in 1936 and functioned as a forced labor site, in addition to being known for the medical experiments carried out there.

As well He was considered a model for the use of the gas chambers, of which he was a precursor, one of the instruments of torture most used by the Nazi regime to carry out its plan of extermination on an industrial scale of millions. of individuals, in particular Jews, but also considered as “impure” because of a physical or cognitive handicap or because of their sexual condition.

The gas chambers were used in other infamous Nazi concentration camps like Auschwitz, in what is now Poland.

The Sachsenhausen camp housed mainly political prisoners, as well as Jews, Roma and homosexuals.

He is the latest individual to be charged in the same way he was charged last year. Bruno D., 93, was convicted of 5,230 counts of aiding and abetting murder in the Stutthof concentration camp. And last week, prosecutors indicted Irmgard F., 95, the secretary of the Stutthof camp, with complicity in murder on 10,000 counts.

(With information from Reuters and EFE)

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