A 100-year-old man on trial for his alleged position as a Nazi SS guard at a focus camp throughout World Warfare II informed a German court docket Friday that he was harmless.
The defendant is charged with 3,518 counts of accent to homicide on the Sachsenhausen focus camp close to Berlin, the place he allegedly labored between 1942 and 1945 as an enlisted member of the Nazi Get together’s paramilitary wing.
German information company dpa reported that the defendant, who was recognized solely as Josef S. in line with German privateness guidelines, stated on the second day of his trial earlier than the Neuruppin state court docket that he didn’t know the Sachsenhausen camp.
Two witnesses from France and the Netherlands earlier informed the court docket how their fathers have been killed at Sachsenhausen for having been a part of the resistance towards the Nazis.
Authorities deemed the defendant match sufficient to face trial regardless of his superior age, although the variety of hours per day the court docket is in session can be restricted.
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100-year-old former Nazi SS guard on trial for 3,518 deaths
Greater than 200,000 folks have been held at Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945. Tens of 1000’s of inmates died of hunger, illness, exhaustion from pressured labor and different causes, in addition to by means of medical experiments and systematic SS extermination operations together with shootings, hangings and gassing.
The precise numbers of these killed range, with higher estimates of some 100,000, although students recommend figures of 40,000 to 50,000 are seemingly extra correct.
“The defendant knowingly and willingly aided and abetted this at the very least by carefully performing guard responsibility, which was seamlessly built-in into the killing system,” prosecutor Cyrill Klement informed the court docket.
Additional hearings are scheduled by means of January.
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