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The accused, Josef S (left), covers his face in the court room in Brandenburg.
The accused, Josef S (left), covers his face in the court room in Brandenburg. Photograph: Annegret Hilse/Reuters
The accused, Josef S (left), covers his face in the court room in Brandenburg. Photograph: Annegret Hilse/Reuters

Trial begins of 100-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard

This article is more than 2 years old

Josef S, alleged to have worked at Sachsenhausen, is charged with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder

A 100-year-old man has gone on trial in Germany accused of being an accessory to murder for serving as a Nazi SS guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin during the second world war.

The trial of the defendant, who is charged with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder, is being held at the Neuruppin state court, which moved the proceedings to a prison sport hall in Brandenburg for organisational reasons.

The suspect, who was identified only as Josef S in keeping with German privacy rules, is alleged to have worked at Sachsenhausen between 1942 and 1945 as an enlisted member of the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing.

The suspect’s lawyer, Stefan Waterkamp, told the court on Thursday that his client “will not speak, but will only provide information about his personal situation”.

The stance came as a blow to co-plaintiffs at the trial. Antoine Grumbach, 79, whose father was killed at the camp, said he wanted the accused to acknowledge “the possibility of guilt”.

Thomas Walther, a lawyer representing several camp survivors and victims’ relatives, said he hoped the defendant would change his mind. “A man is not made of stone, not a machine,” Walther told AFP. “Maybe he will still say something.”

Authorities say the defendant is considered fit enough to stand trial despite his advanced age, though the number of hours the court is in session each day will be limited.

More than 200,000 people were held at Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945. Tens of thousands of people died of starvation, disease, exhaustion from forced labour and other causes, as well as through medical experiments and systematic SS extermination operations including shootings, hangings and gassing.

Exact numbers on those killed vary, with upper estimates of about 100,000, though scholars suggest figures of 40,000 to 50,000 are probably more accurate.

“The defendant knowingly and willingly aided and abetted this at least by conscientiously performing guard duty, which was seamlessly integrated into the killing system,” the prosecutor, Cyrill Klement, told the court.

A survivor of Sachsenhausen, 100-year-old Leon Schwarzbaum, attended the trial as a visitor. “This is the last trial for my friends, acquaintances and my loved ones who were murdered, in which the last guilty person can still be sentenced – hopefully,” Schwarzbaum, who also survived the Auschwitz death camp and Buchenwald concentration camp, told the German news agency dpa.

The executive vice-president of the Auschwitz Committee expressed disappointment at the defence lawyer’s announcement that the accused would not comment on the allegations.

“I found him surprisingly robust and present. He would have the strength to make an apology and he would also have the strength to remember,” Christoph Heubner said outside the building. “Obviously, however, he does not want to muster the strength to remember, and for the survivors of the camps and for the relatives of the murdered who have come here to hear some truth spoken, this means once again a rejection, a disparagement and a confrontation with the continued silence of the SS.”

The opening of the trial comes a week after that of another elderly concentration camp suspect’s trial was disrupted. A 96-year-old former secretary for the Stutthof camp’s SS commander skipped the opening of her trial at the Itzehoe state court in northern Germany. She was tracked down within hours and proceedings are to resume on 19 October.

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