A 100-year-old former warden in a Nazi camp declared him innocent – PRAVDA.sk

Josef Schütz, a 100-year-old former warden at the Nazi concentration camp, told a German court on Friday that he did not feel guilty. This is reported by the AFP agency.


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According to the allegations, the former warden in the Nazi camp, Josef Schütz, helped and encouraged the execution of Soviet prisoners of war and the murder of prisoners.

“I am innocent,” said Schütz, who is accused of “knowingly and willingly” assisting in the murder of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, near the metropolis of Berlin, from 1942 to 1945.

When asked about his work at the Schütz camp, he insisted that he “knew nothing” about what had happened there and “did absolutely nothing”.

However, according to the allegations, Schütz helped and encouraged the “execution of Soviet prisoners of war by shooting in 1942” and the murder of prisoners “using the poison gas Cyclone B”.

Schütz is the oldest person to be tried for his involvement in the murders of thousands of Nazi-era prisoners, AFP recalls.

According to the local memorial center, more than 200,000 people were imprisoned in Sachsenhausen between 1936 and 1945. Tens of thousands have died as a result of hunger, disease, forced labor, medical experiments, abuse, or have fallen victim to systematic exterminations.

More than seven decades after World War II, German prosecutors have sought to bring Nazi survivors to justice. In recent years, they have focused mainly on lower-ranking staff, writes AFP.

Schütz remains at large during the trial. Even if he is convicted, he is extremely unlikely, given his age, that he would go to prison.