According to the Washington Post, a German court has convicted a former 101-year-old concentration camp guard of participating in thousands of murders and sentenced him to five years in prison, the latest in a series of former Nazi prosecutions in the country. .
Although innocent, Joseph Schweitz pleaded guilty in more than 3,500 cases.
Schweitz is accused of taking part in the massacre of thousands of Jews, political prisoners and other minorities who were persecuted by the Nazis between 1942 and 1945 at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
According to AFP, Schweitz said during his trial that he did not know what was going on in the concentration camp and provided conflicting accounts of his whereabouts during World War II.
“You have willingly supported this genocide with your activities,” a judge said during Tuesday’s trial.
According to Deutsche Welle, Schweitz is the most senior person to be tried in Germany on charges of colluding with the Nazis during World War II.
“Trials and convictions show how law enforcement officials compete with time to close the cases of Holocaust survivors and their families, and many Nazis and their victims die of old age,” the paper said.
Tens of thousands died in Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp for the killing and slaughter of Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, and other wanted minorities, by shooting and burning them in gas chambers.
Soviet forces liberated the camp in April 1945.
Source: Lebanon Debate
