The oldest accused of Nazi crimes, a centenarian whose trial opened Thursday, October 7 in Germany, will not speak on the facts with which he is accused, his lawyer said at the first hearing: "The accused will not speak "on the facts" but will give information about his personal situation, "said Stefan Waterkamp, lawyer for Josef Schütz, a former concentration camp guard and one of the last former Nazis on trial in Germany.
Appearing free, Josef Schütz entered the room using a walker, hiding his face from the photographers with a cardboard sleeve.
However, he replied in a clear voice to the president of the court, who asked him to confirm his identity and his personal situation.
The man lives in Brandenburg, a region neighboring Berlin.
Widowed since 1986, he explained with pride that he would soon be celebrating his 101st birthday on November 16.
This first of 22 scheduled hearings, completed after only an hour due to his precarious state of health, was devoted to reading part of the 134 pages of the indictment by the prosecutor, Cyrill Klement.
Josef Schütz, former master corporal of the "Totenkopf" (Skull) division of the Waffen-SS, is being prosecuted for "complicity in the murders" of 3,518 prisoners while operating in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, not far from Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.
The accused was 21 years old at the beginning of the events.
He is in particular suspected of having shot Soviet prisoners, "of aid and complicity in systematic murders" by Zyklon B-type gas and "by detention of prisoners in hostile conditions".
Between its opening in 1936 and its liberation by the Soviets on April 22, 1945, the Sachsenhausen camp saw some 200,000 prisoners, mainly political opponents, Jews and homosexuals.
Several tens of thousands of them perished.
"A bastard"
The desire of Josef Schütz not to comment on the facts as well as the refusal of a possible request for pardon was coldly received by the civil parties.
"I'm moved. It's been 80 years since I lost my father and this guy is a dirty guy, a bastard who refuses the possibility of guilt", exclaimed to AFP Antoine Grumbach, 79 years old. This Frenchman attends the opening of the trial in memory of his father, engaged in the Gaullist resistance and assassinated in March 1944 in Sachsenhausen. The lawyer for 11 of the 16 civil parties, including seven survivors, Thomas Walther, wanted to be more confident: "For the plaintiffs, the fact that he appeared for his trial is already a positive sign and (... ) something can happen. Perhaps such a man will eventually decide - before his last hour - to explain himself about his past. "
This trial takes place a week after the abortive one of Irmgard Furchner, 96, a former secretary of another Nazi concentration camp.
The reading of the indictment was postponed until October 19 after an incredible attempt to flee the nonagenarian.
A trial with a "memorial" function
For ten years, Germany has tried and condemned four former SS by extending to the camp guards and other executors of the Nazi machinery the count of complicity in murder, illustrating the increased severity, although considered very late by the victims, of his justice.
Thus Josef Schütz "is not accused of having shot someone in particular, but of having contributed to these acts through his work as a guard and of having been aware that such murders were taking place in the camps" , explains the spokesperson for the parquet floor of Neuruppin, Iris le Claire.
Theoretically, he risks at least three years in prison, but his sentence will certainly be symbolic given his great age.
The trial is held exceptionally in a gymnasium, near the home of the accused to save him long trips.
"The main function of this trial is memory," explains Guillaume Mouralis, research director at CNRS and member of the Marc Bloch Center in Berlin.
In July 2020, a court imposed a two-year suspended prison sentence on a former Stutthof camp guard, Bruno Dey, 93 years old.
Eight other files of former SS are currently examined by various German prosecutors.
With AFP
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