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An elderly German will not be tried for his World War II involvement in the atrocities committed at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Because the 99-year-old worked as a guard at the camp outside Berlin, he was considered complicit in the deaths of at least 3,300 prisoners between July 1943 and February 1945.
In October, the investigation established that the man was capable of pursuing trial under certain circumstances. But a new report now concludes that the man’s condition has deteriorated physically and psychologically and there is no chance of improvement. This is why the judge finds the trial so stressful.
At least 200,000 Nazi opponents were imprisoned in Sachsenhausen, including more than 1,400 Dutch, such as resistance fighters Anton de Kom, Truss van Leer, and Koos Vorink. About half of the prisoners died from hardships such as starvation, disease, or abuse by guards.
Soon after the war, key figures who had made Hitler’s murderous plans possible were put on trial, but in recent years, German prosecutors have increasingly brought cases against the guards who carried out the policy. For example, last year, a 101-year-old former guard from Sachsenhausen was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his involvement in the murder of 3,518 people.
Condemning a Holocaust denier
In Germany, prominent right-wing extremist Ursula Haverbeck (95 years old) was also convicted yesterday on appeal on charges of denying the Holocaust. She had insisted twice in 2015 that Auschwitz was merely a labor camp. More than a million people, most of them Jews, were killed in the gas chambers of the extermination camp.
Haverbeck has previously been punished for Holocaust denial, which is prohibited by law in Germany. In 2004, she escaped a fine, but was then imprisoned for more than two years. In 2015, she was sentenced to ten months in prison.
In ruling, the judge took into account that Haverbeek had had to wait an unusually long time before her appeal. Consequently, the prison sentence of one year and four months was reduced to four months. She can still appeal the ruling.