20.06.2016 tjcnewspaper.com
Ex-Nazi guard convicted for role in Auschwitz murders
by Bill Blare

FILE- In this Saturday June 11, 2016 file photo, 94-year-old former SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp Reinhold Hanning, arrives at a courtroom in Detmold, Germany. "I am ashamed that I saw injustice and never did anything about it and I apologize for my actions", he testified in April.

"I want to say to you that I'm deeply regretful at having belonged to a criminal organisation that was responsible for the death of vast numbers of people, for the destruction of countless numbers of families, for misery, torture and suffering on the part of the victims and their relatives. Without the active participation of people like him, Auschwitz would not have been possible". Though the indictment against Hanning is focused on a period between January 1943 and June 1944 for legal reasons, the court has said it would consider the full time he served there.

Hanning joined the Hitler Youth 1934, joined the Waffen SS in 1942 and was posted in 1942 to Auschwitz.

A former guard at the Auschwitz-Birkenau German concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland has been sentenced to five years in jail by a German court.

But now several camp guards are being put on trial for being an accessory to murder, with the thinking being that they have culpability even if they did not directly kill or torture.

"You spent almost two and half years in Auschwitz and therefore you helped in the mass murder", said Judge Anke Grudda during sentencing, according to CNN Affiliate ARD. Demjanjuk had appealed but died before the German Federal Court of Justice could rule on the case, and the court is still considering an appeal filed by Groening.

Besides Hanning, one other man and one woman in their 90s are accused of being accessories to the mass murder at Auschwitz.

Prosecutors had sought six years in prison on grounds that Hanning "contributed to the extermination aim of the camp", while his lawyers wanted an acquittal, saying he had not personally "killed, hit or abused" anyone.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre's chief Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, welcomed Friday's conviction but also called on German authorities to "do everything in their power to expedite the remaining cases".

The case caps what is expected to be one of the last Holocaust trials.

As those involved in Nazi operations age and move toward death, special prosecutor Jens Rommel and his office have been trying to get in a final wave of investigations before the generation is gone.

"The Hanning verdict highlights the important role played by all those who served in the death camps", he said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem. "You can't really look into the future — but we have the mandate to keep investigating as long as there's still the possibility of finding someone".

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