Zürcher Nachrichten - Former Nazi camp guard, 101, faces German court verdict

EUR -
AED 3.85008
AFN 70.757963
ALL 97.955404
AMD 407.104681
ANG 1.883645
AOA 955.969707
ARS 1055.802012
AUD 1.622193
AWG 1.889403
AZN 1.795578
BAM 1.944323
BBD 2.110193
BDT 124.892774
BGN 1.955857
BHD 0.39511
BIF 3034.57529
BMD 1.048213
BND 1.407266
BOB 7.222504
BRL 6.089167
BSD 1.045101
BTN 88.097292
BWP 14.259102
BYN 3.420345
BYR 20544.965697
BZD 2.106784
CAD 1.47451
CDF 3009.418434
CHF 0.929796
CLF 0.037132
CLP 1024.596131
CNY 7.60169
CNH 7.608708
COP 4616.044989
CRC 534.032391
CUC 1.048213
CUP 27.777632
CVE 110.76984
CZK 25.268843
DJF 186.288527
DKK 7.459075
DOP 63.415504
DZD 140.067679
EGP 52.017374
ERN 15.723188
ETB 129.401876
FJD 2.388908
FKP 0.827372
GBP 0.83466
GEL 2.861414
GGP 0.827372
GHS 16.453302
GIP 0.827372
GMD 74.423426
GNF 9046.074154
GTQ 8.066232
GYD 218.655135
HKD 8.158144
HNL 26.44113
HRK 7.477172
HTG 137.169651
HUF 410.352674
IDR 16691.264721
ILS 3.821086
IMP 0.827372
INR 88.380983
IQD 1373.682528
IRR 44116.647041
ISK 145.103979
JEP 0.827372
JMD 165.035815
JOD 0.743499
JPY 160.493397
KES 135.757471
KGS 90.98635
KHR 4245.260573
KMF 491.559061
KPW 943.390885
KRW 1465.359179
KWD 0.322525
KYD 0.870975
KZT 521.849631
LAK 23023.988297
LBP 93867.432577
LKR 304.347668
LRD 188.494832
LSL 18.909527
LTL 3.095099
LVL 0.634053
LYD 5.130966
MAD 10.517234
MDL 19.100616
MGA 4904.58649
MKD 61.561577
MMK 3404.553427
MNT 3561.82614
MOP 8.377707
MRU 41.839417
MUR 49.600955
MVR 16.195214
MWK 1819.697389
MXN 21.680515
MYR 4.672411
MZN 66.977539
NAD 18.909354
NGN 1773.858758
NIO 38.531971
NOK 11.715311
NPR 140.95527
NZD 1.798596
OMR 0.403563
PAB 1.045141
PEN 3.960409
PGK 4.161423
PHP 61.751234
PKR 291.141349
PLN 4.304378
PYG 8156.011724
QAR 3.816127
RON 4.976889
RSD 116.999422
RUB 110.5659
RWF 1437.099386
SAR 3.938271
SBD 8.795122
SCR 14.25517
SDG 630.494166
SEK 11.524352
SGD 1.412115
SHP 0.827372
SLE 23.795332
SLL 21980.497729
SOS 599.044422
SRD 37.111943
STD 21695.883154
SVC 9.145018
SYP 2633.665293
SZL 18.91016
THB 36.392893
TJS 11.167586
TMT 3.679226
TND 3.319951
TOP 2.45502
TRY 36.315528
TTD 7.106121
TWD 34.062192
TZS 2772.522521
UAH 43.425167
UGX 3872.179958
USD 1.048213
UYU 44.537103
UZS 13448.566691
VES 48.943826
VND 26640.321592
VUV 124.445899
WST 2.926181
XAF 652.120061
XAG 0.03439
XAU 0.000398
XCD 2.832847
XDR 0.799466
XOF 657.751906
XPF 119.331742
YER 261.97454
ZAR 19.055964
ZMK 9435.181668
ZMW 28.820153
ZWL 337.524009
  • SCS

    -0.1800

    13.54

    -1.33%

  • CMSC

    -0.1600

    24.57

    -0.65%

  • AZN

    -0.0400

    66.36

    -0.06%

  • BCC

    -4.0900

    148.41

    -2.76%

  • GSK

    -0.1300

    34.02

    -0.38%

  • NGG

    -0.4300

    62.83

    -0.68%

  • BCE

    -0.3900

    26.63

    -1.46%

  • BTI

    0.3800

    37.71

    +1.01%

  • RIO

    -0.9500

    62.03

    -1.53%

  • BP

    -0.3600

    28.96

    -1.24%

  • RBGPF

    0.8100

    61

    +1.33%

  • CMSD

    -0.1500

    24.43

    -0.61%

  • RYCEF

    0.0300

    6.8

    +0.44%

  • JRI

    -0.1300

    13.24

    -0.98%

  • VOD

    -0.0500

    8.86

    -0.56%

  • RELX

    0.2400

    46.81

    +0.51%

Former Nazi camp guard, 101, faces German court verdict
Former Nazi camp guard, 101, faces German court verdict / Photo: Tobias Schwarz - AFP/File

Former Nazi camp guard, 101, faces German court verdict

A German court will give its verdict on Tuesday in the trial of a 101-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, the oldest person so far to be charged with complicity in war crimes during the Holocaust.

Text size:

Josef Schuetz is accused of involvement in the murders of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.

The pensioner, who now lives in Brandenburg state, has pleaded innocent, saying he did "absolutely nothing" and was not aware of the gruesome crimes being carried out at the camp.

"I don't know why I am here," he said at the close of his trial on Monday.

But prosecutors say he "knowingly and willingly" participated in the crimes as a guard at the camp and are seeking to punish him with five years behind bars.

More than 200,000 people including Jews, Roma, regime opponents and gay people were detained at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1936 and 1945.

Tens of thousands of inmates died from forced labour, murder, medical experiments, hunger or disease before the camp was liberated by Soviet troops, according to the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum.

The allegations against Schuetz include aiding and abetting the "execution by firing squad of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942" and the murder of prisoners "using the poisonous gas Zyklon B".

He was 21 years old at the time.

- Contradictory statements -

During the trial, Schuetz made several inconsistent statements about his past, complaining that his head was getting "mixed up".

At one point, the centenarian said he had worked as an agricultural labourer in Germany for most of World War II, a claim contradicted by several historical documents bearing his name, date and place of birth.

After the war, Schuetz was transferred to a prison camp in Russia before returning to Germany, where he worked as a farmer and a locksmith.

Schuetz has remained at liberty during the trial, which began in 2021 but has been delayed several times because of his health.

Even if convicted, he is highly unlikely to be put behind bars given his age.

He intends to appeal if found guilty, his lawyer Stefan Waterkamp told AFP.

More than seven decades after World War II, German prosecutors are racing to bring the last surviving Nazi perpetrators to justice.

The 2011 conviction of former guard John Demjanjuk, on the basis that he served as part of Hitler's killing machine, set a legal precedent and paved the way to several of these twilight justice cases.

Since then, courts have handed down several guilty verdicts on those grounds rather than for murders or atrocities directly linked to the individual accused.

- 'Moral responsibility' -

Among those brought to late justice were Oskar Groening, an accountant at Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard at Auschwitz.

Both were convicted at the age of 94 of complicity in mass murder, but died before they could be imprisoned.

A former SS guard, Bruno Dey, was found guilty at the age of 93 in 2020 and was given a two-year suspended sentence.

Separately in the northern German town of Itzehoe, a 96-year-old former secretary in a Nazi death camp is on trial for complicity in murder.

She dramatically fled before the start of her trial, but was caught several hours later.

While some have questioned the wisdom of chasing convictions related to Nazi crimes so long after the events, Guillaume Mouralis, a research professor at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), said such trials send an important signal.

"It is a question of reaffirming the political and moral responsibility of individuals in an authoritarian context (and in a criminal regime) at a time when the neo-fascist far right is strengthening everywhere in Europe," he told AFP.

T.Furrer--NZN