The verdict was handed down in a German court on Tuesday. Schütz thus becomes the oldest person ever convicted of complicity in the Holocaust.
He is accused of complicity in the murder of 3,518 prisoners while working as a guard in the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen north of Berlin in Germany between 1942 and 1945.
According to the prosecution, Schütz had “knowingly and intentionally” contributed to the execution of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942 and killed several others by using the toxic gas Zyklon B.
The pensioner did not plead guilty in the trial, and even says he was not aware of the horrific crimes that happened in the camp while he worked there.
More than 200,000 people, including Jews, Roma, opponents of the regime and homosexuals, were interned in Sachsenhausen near Oranienburg between 1936 and 1945. Tens of thousands of them died as a result of forced labor, murder, medical experiments, starvation or disease.
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