Germany Is Prosecuting Its Last Nazis In Their 90S And Older

The nursing home resident was a secretary at the command post at the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig, and is now among the last ex-Nazis to be prosecuted in Germany. The defendants are in their late 90s or even centenarians, but German prosecutors and a Nazi hunter are determined to face justice for the murder of six million Jews. Last month, 101-year-old Josef Schuetz became the oldest ex-Nazi to be prosecuted. He was convicted of murdering more than 3,500 Jewish, minority and political prisoners while serving as a concentration camp guard at the Sachsenhausen death camp between 1942 and 1945. A German regional court sentenced him to five years in prison, although he is not expected to serve due to ill health , according to reports. Schuetz, who is known in Germany as Josef S. due to the country’s privacy laws, has repeatedly denied the allegations. His lawyer told AFP he would appeal the conviction.
Schuetz’s prosecution was made possible after the German government changed its policy on Nazi war criminals more than a decade ago. Previously, prosecutors had to prove a specific crime against a specific victim. But for the past several years, Germany has allowed prosecutions of Nazis who served in death camps or mobile killing units, “based on their service alone,” said Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff. Irmgard Furchner was a secretary in the commandant’s office at the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig and — at age 97 — is among the last ex-Nazis to be prosecuted in Germany. MARCUS BRANDT/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Josef Schuetz, at 101, is the oldest ex-Nazi to be prosecuted and convicted — for murdering more than 3,500 Jews, minorities and political prisoners while serving as a concentration camp guard.AFP via Getty Images “In the past, Germany failed miserably when it came to Nazi persecution,” said Zuroff, who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem and is director of Eastern European affairs. Zuroff, 73, has been hunting Nazis for more than 40 years. Between 1949 and 1985, there were 200,000 investigations and 120,000 indictments of former Nazis in Germany, but fewer than 7,000 convictions, Zuroff told The Post. “And the punishments were ridiculous,” Zuroff continued. “People who served in Treblinka [death camp] it took three years.” There are now six prosecutions underway in Germany against those who worked in death camps during the war, although that number may change as prosecutors continue to identify and build cases against others, according to Attorney General Thomas Will, head of the Central Office of the State Administrations of Justice for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg. Former Nazi secretary Irmgard Furchner is pictured in 1944. Newsflash Irmgard Furchner is on trial in Itzehoe, Germany. One Nazi hunter said that as long as ex-Nazis and conspirators are still alive, they “cannot be allowed to live in peace”. “Under German law, there is no statute of limitations for murder, but also for complicity in it,” Will told The Post, adding that his agency investigates suspected Nazis and then turns the cases over to local prosecutors in the areas where the crimes took place or where the suspects currently reside. Since the 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk, an Ohio auto worker convicted in Munich of being a low-level guard at the Sobibor extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, prosecutors in Germany have focused on “systematic mass killings in concentration camps and now also in the POW camps,” Will said. For Will and his agency, age isn’t an issue unless the defendant is too frail to stand trial, he said. Furchner worked at the German Nazi concentration camp Stutthof in Sztutowo, northern Poland. KFP/AFP via Getty Images “It is not possible by law to refrain from prosecution in individual cases – for example because of the age of the accused – as the necessary enforcement of the criminal law in the case of murder does not allow for any discretion,” he told The Post. “However, a prerequisite for any criminal conviction is the defendant’s competency to stand trial. This should be carefully checked again and again, especially in the case of very old people. If there is a lack of this capacity to negotiate, no criminal proceedings can take place.’ The six suspects his office recently investigated are between 96 and 100 years old, he said. Because the investigation is ongoing, Will said he could not confirm the identities of the suspects — who include guards who worked at death camps such as Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Stalag IV. both allied and soviet soldiers. This camp was known for its harsh conditions and frequent typhus outbreaks. Between 1941 and 1942 more than 25,000 soldiers, mostly Soviet, died in the POW camp, according to reports. Efraim Zuroff, who heads the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, has been hunting Nazis for more than 40 years.AFP/Getty Images “The main perpetrators are criminally classified as murderers and their supporters are guilty of aiding and abetting murder,” Will said. “The prerequisite, however, is that these aides participated in the proceedings and also recognized the consequences of their actions and witnessed mass murder.” Zuroff, who has brought several cases to the Will agency, hopes that German prosecutors will continue to investigate Herbert Wahler, a former doctor who was allegedly a member of the mobile killing unit Einzatgruppe C, which slaughtered 33,771 Jewish men, women and children at Babyn Yar. , a ravine outside the Ukrainian capital in 1941. A German regional court in Kassel first took up this case a few years ago, but closed it due to lack of evidence in 2020. Protesters demanded that Herbert Wahler, 100, be tried for his alleged role in a Nazi Waffen-SS unit that killed an estimated 78,000 Jews. He now lives in Meslungen, Germany. Still, Zuroff said, “Why do you need a doctor in a massacre?” “Whatever happened, happened. it’s over,” Wahler told German broadcaster ARD in 2017 when asked about his time during World War II. Now a descendant of a Babyn Yar victim has filed to reopen Wahler’s case. For Zuroff, who tracked down Wahler along with other alleged Einzatzgruppen members still living in Germany a few years ago, the prosecution represents a final chance to bring both the perpetrators and accomplices of the mass killing to justice for their crimes during World War II. Ohio auto worker John Demjanjuk was 91 when he was sentenced in Munich as a low-level guard at the Sobibor extermination camp. He died a year later.ZUMA24.com? ZUMAPRESS.com Will declined to comment on the Wahler case. “As long as any of the Einzatzgruppen members are alive, they cannot be allowed to live in peace,” Zuroff said. It’s a view shared by descendants of Holocaust survivors. Last December, on the day Herbert Wahler celebrated his 100th birthday in Meslungen, a quiet spa town in central Germany, a group of protesters arrived on his doorstep. Wahler’s Waffen-SS division was responsible for the massacre of 33,771 Jews at Babin Yar in Ukraine. Getty ImagesDr. Efraim Zuroff presents an annual report on the ten most wanted former Nazis at a briefing in Los Angeles November 19, 2009. MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images Holding large portraits of Jews who perished during the Holocaust, they surrounded Wahler’s home, demanding that German authorities deport one of the last surviving Nazis. Wahler reportedly first served in a unit of the Waffen-SS — the fighting branch of Hitler’s elite forces, which, in late July 1941, was assigned to Einsatzgruppen C. This unit traveled from place to place, murdering Jews and civilians. By the fall of 1941, Zuroff estimated, some 78,000 people had been murdered by the mobile killing units. The massacre at Babyn Yar on the outskirts of Kiev was “the largest mass killing in the history of the Holocaust,” he said. In addition to hunting down Wahler — one of thousands of Nazis allegedly sent by Adolf Hitler to Ukraine to kill Jews — the New York-born Zuroff, who has a doctorate in European history, was instrumental in finding Nazis who fled the South America. Australia, USA and Canada. He famously identified Aribert Heim, an Austrian SS doctor known as “Dr. Death’ and the ‘Butcher of Mauthausen’, who lives in Egypt. But Heim died in 1992 before Zuroff could bring him to justice. Soviet POWs were ordered by the Nazis to cover the mass grave at Babin Yar. Wikipedia/Johannes Hähle Zuroff, who has been hunting Nazis since 1978, estimates that about 10,000 Nazi collaborators entered the U.S. illegally after World War II, and there may be hundreds more scattered around the world, most of them living in Austria and Germany. “Austria has not prosecuted any Nazis for more than 45 years,” he said, adding that many countries around the world lacked the political will to pursue war criminals after the war. Zuroff, who has written several books about his Nazi hunting adventures and other Holocaust-related topics, refuses to give up. Wahler was allegedly linked to the mobile killing unit Einzatgruppe C, which slaughtered an estimated 78,000 people. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images “They may be old, but they’re still guilty”…