Josef Schütz, the oldest Nazi convicted of crimes committed during World War II, has died at the age of 102.
Last June, Josef Schütz, a former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, was sentenced to five years in jail for helping to murder thousands of prisoners.
Despite always denying that he was an SS guard in that camp, the man was found guilty of abetting and abetting the deaths of 3,518 people.
He was complicit in the shooting of Soviet prisoners of war and in the murder of others with Zyklon B poison gas.
Tens of thousands of people died in Sachsenhausen during World War II, victims of famine, forced labor, medical experiments, and murder at the hands of the SS.
More than 200,000 people were held there, including political prisoners, Jews, Roma and Sinti (Gypsy people from Europe).
“I don’t understand why I’m sitting on the bench of sin. I really had nothing to do with it, ”Josef Schütz said in his final statement before the guilty verdict was known in a German court.
Trials of Nazi concentration camp guards were only possible starting in 2011, when former SS guard John Demjanjuk was found guilty. The verdict prompted a search for other individuals involved who were still alive.
Four years later, the so-called “Auschwitz accountant”, Oskar Gröning, received a four-year prison sentence.
And a former concentration camp secretary was sentenced to two years last December.
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