A 101-year-old man has been sentenced by a German court to five years in jail on charges of aiding and abetting the murder of thousands of prisoners at the Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
All the way through his trial in Brandenburg an der Havel, to the west of Berlin, the accused denied that he had been a guard at the camp.
The prosecution had produced documents identifying a Nazi SS guard with the accused’s name, date of birth and place of birth, among other evidence.
More than 200,000 people were imprisoned in the concentration camp, located near Berlin, between the summer of 1936 when it was built until the end of World War II in 1945.
Among them were political opponents of the Nazi regime as well as members of groups persecuted by the National Socialists such as Jews, Sinti and Roma.
Tens of thousands of prisoners died of hunger, disease, forced labour, medical experiments and mistreatment as part of a systematic extermination plan.
The elderly man was only fit to stand trial in the courtroom for limited periods, and participated for about two and a half hours each day.
-DPA
