In Germany, 101-year-old concentration camp guard was sentenced to five years in prison

A 101-year-old former security guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp has been sentenced to five years in prison in the German city of Neuruppin. He was found guilty of facilitating brutal and insidious killings, as well as "creating and maintaining life-threatening conditions in the camp."

This was reported by DW.

The process lasted nine months. The accused pleaded not guilty. He stated in court that he had never served in Sachsenhausen and had worked on a farm at the time specified in the indictment. However, the prosecutorʼs office provided the documents of the security guard of the concentration camp, whose name, surname and date of birth completely coincided with the data of the accused.

• The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was opened in 1936. It was one of the first Nazi concentration camps to serve as a training camp for SS guards, who later went to serve in Auschwitz and Treblinka. From 1936 to 1945, more than 200,000 people were held in the camp. Tens of thousands of prisoners died of starvation, disease, forced labor, and other causes, as well as during and as a result of medical experiments and systematic SS destruction operations.
• A 2011 court ruling paved the way for the final prosecution of crimes committed during World War II — even those who indirectly participated in the killings ("without pulling the trigger and without giving orders") could be held criminally liable.