Germany Jails 101-Year-Old For Holocaust Crimes

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

BERLIN/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – A German court has sentenced the oldest person so far to be charged with war crimes in the Holocaust to five years imprisonment.

Prosecutors accused the 101-year-old pensioner of involvement in the murders of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1942 and 1945. Most of those killed were Jews, political prisoners, and other minorities persecuted by the German Nazis at the camp.

The man, identified internationally as Josef Schuetz and Josef S. in Germany due to privacy laws, repeatedly denied the allegations. He claimed he was an agricultural laborer in a different country area at the time. “I don’t know why I am here,” Schuetz said on the last day of his trial Monday.

However, the judge disagreed, telling the centenarian: “You willingly supported this mass extermination with your activity.” The verdict was read in a gymnasium in the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, where he lives.

The sentenced man’s lawyer, Stefan Waterkamp, earlier said he would appeal a guilty verdict.

The trial underscored a debate in Germany on how to overcome the Holocaust, or Shoah, when at least 6 million Jews and others the Nazis didn’t like were killed, many in death camps.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office, told a Worthy News reporter once that he believes it’s never too late for justice. His organization continues the hunt for several suspected Nazi war criminals still alive.

“Think of someone at the height of his physical powers who was devoting all his energy to the mass murder of innocent people. Old age should not offer protection to people who committed such heinous crimes,” he said.

Zuroff says many Holocaust victims never had the opportunity to become old and frail because they were murdered.

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