A former guard of Nazi concentration camp aged 100 has been charged with complicity in the murder of thousands of detainees. He told a German court that he is not guilty.
“I am innocent,” said Josef Schuetz, who stands accused of “knowingly and willingly” assisting in the murder of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.
The Sachsenhausen camp where Josef Schuetz was a guard, an excess of 200,000 people were detained and murdered between 1936 and 1945. Those who died include the Jews, gay, regime opponents and Roma people.
Thousands of inmates died from hunger, forced labour, disease and medical experiments. Later the camp was liberated by the Soviet troops as reported by the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum.
Allegations leveled against Schuetz include aiding and abetting the “execution by firing squad of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942” as well as killed prisoners using the poisonous gas Zyklon B.
The Plaintiffs complained and accused the former guard “To Mr Schuetz, I would like to say – I can understand that you were driven by fear of the Nazis to not leave your work, but how did you sleep peacefully for so long? Have you not thought about it? Never felt guilty?”
“This trial has a significant meaning but it would serve society more if the accused were to participate more,” he said.
Schuetz’s defense team had stated at the opening of the case on Thursday that he would not speak about his time at the concentration camp, but would only reveal details about his private life.
On the second day, the guard arrived for the court hearing and provided details about his past, he said that he worked at a family farm in Lithuania before he joined the army in 1938.
After the war, the guard was transferred to a detainees’ camp in Russia and later worked as a farmer in Brandenburg state Germany and later as a locksmith.
“My wife always said that ‘there’s no other man in the world like you’,” said Schuetz who has been a widower since 1986. He is free during the trial and he is not likely to be imprisoned even if he is convicted because he is too old to serve a prison sentence.
Previously a couple of other people had been convicted for complicity in mass murder, but they died before they could be imprisoned. Former SS guard Bruno Dey, 93, was handed a 2-year suspended sentence.
Elsewhere, Itzehoe, 96, former secretary in a Nazi death camp is facing trial for complicity in murder. She escaped before the trial commenced but she was arrested several hours later. Her trial will continue on 19 October 2021.
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