Former Nazi SS guard, 94, is jailed for five years for his role in the murder of 170,000 people at Auschwitz
Reinhold Hanning joined the SS when he was just 18-years-old and was posted in the most notorious concentration camp
A 94-YEAR-OLD man who was an SS guard at notorious death camp Auschwitz has been sentenced to five years behind bars.
Reinhold Hanning was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of over 170,000 people.
Hanning joined the SS in 1942, when he was just 18-years-old.
Over the four month trial in Detmold, north-west Germany, dozens of Holocaust survivors have testified against the former concentration camp guard.
As they gave evidence, Hanning found he was unable to meet their eye.
Now wheelchair-bound, Hanning stayed silent for much of the proceedings.
Initially the man refused to testify at his own trial, but suddenly made a shock apology in April for his crimes.
He said in a statement: “I deeply regret having been part of a criminal organisation responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people and destruction of countless families.”
Hanning added that he was “ashamed that I watched on as injustice was being done and did nothing to stop it.”
It is thought that he could be one of the last Nazis brought to justice in court.
During his trial, he told the court: “People were being shot, gassed and burned. I could see corpses being moving around and off the site, yes, one was aware of that. I noticed the smell of burning. I knew that corpses were being burned.
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“Of course I found out that trains arrived in Auschwitz crammed full of people. We were aware that the majority of people who arrived in the trains were killed.
“No one in my family knew that I was active at Auschwitz.”
Hanning joined the SS at a very young age, a fact that lawyer Johannes Salmen tried to emphasise in a plea for lenience.
He said: “You can’t act today as if the defendant was a fully-grown man back then who knew just what he was doing.”
Holocaust survivor William Glied attended today’s sentencing.
He told the BBC: “What matters is that he is convicted by a German court for what he did.”
Hanning never personally killed or abused anyone, but said that he would have fired if someone had tried to escape.
Until recently, German lawyers had to prove that they were directly involved in the victim’s killing.
Because of Hanning’s poor health, the trial could only last for two hours each day.
Many of the survivors who testified in court were extremely angry at the former SS guard.
Angela Orosz, 71, who was born in Auschwitz in 1944, flew to Germany to give evidence.
In a rage, she told the defendant: “You know what happened to all the people. You enabled their murder. Tell us! Tell us!”
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