Josef S., first ex-worker of the SS division “Totenkopf” (dead man’s head), is accused of “complicity in the death” of 3,518 prisoners in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.
The trial began Thursday morning in Brandenburg an der Havel, eastern Germany, in the presence of the defendant, who needs a walker to walk and is released.
His lawyer, Stefan Waterkamp, explained that his client “will not express himself” about the facts alleged against him.
“The accused will not speak, he will only give information about his personal situation”said the lawyer.
Josef S. was 21 years old when the facts before him began. He is suspected of having shot Soviet prisoners and “of aid and complicity in gas deaths.”
From its opening in 1936 until its liberation by the Soviets on April 22, 1945, some 200,000 prisoners passed through the Sachsenhausen camp, mainly political opponents, Jews and homosexuals.
Tens of thousands of them died of exhaustion due to forced labor and cruel conditions of detention.
Christoffel Heijer, 84, is present at the trial. His father was a Dutch resistance who was arrested in 1941 by the Gestapo and shot in May 1942 in the countryside.
“My mother received a letter from him on May 3, 1942, before he was shot. When she found out, days later, that he had died, she cried a lot and all of her hair suddenly turned gray,” she recalls.
The trial comes a week after the failed hearing against Irmgard Furchner, 96, a former secretary of another Nazi concentration camp.
Her first hearing had to be postponed to October 19 after the old woman tried to escape and was on the run for a few hours, just the day the trial began.
In the last 10 years, Germany has tried and sentenced four former SS members, by extending the accusation of complicity to murder to the camp guards and other executors of Nazi orders, thus illustrating the severity of their justice, considered however belated by the victims.
Josef S. “is not accused of shooting at someone in particular, but of having contributed to these acts through his guard duty and of having been aware that these murders were taking place in the fields,” explained the spokeswoman for the Neuruppin prosecutor’s office. , Iris le Claire.
The accused faces a minimum of three years in prison, but his sentence would be symbolic given his advanced age.
In August, a doctor declared him fit to appear, on the condition that the 22 hearings scheduled until January be limited to a maximum of two hours.
For Stephanie Bohra, a researcher at the Berlin museum Topography of Terror, dedicated to Nazi crimes, “these processes are particularly important for the survivors and their descendants. They want justice to be done and crimes to be solved.”
Other historians and experts highlight that They are trials where the essential thing is to rescue the memory.
“It is about confirming that a unified Germany is determined to get to the bottom of the Nazi past, in a context in which, since the early 2000s, the memory of the genocide of the Jews was placed at the center of national identity “, Held.
In July 2020, a court sentenced a former Stutthof camp guard, Bruno Dey, 93, to two years in suspended prison.
Eight other cases of former SS members are evaluated by different German prosecutors.
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
