Former Auschwitz guard jailed for 5 years in Germany

BERLIN

A former guard at Auschwitz death camp was sentenced to five years in prison by a court in Germany on Friday, local media reported.

Reinhold Hanning, 94, was convicted of complicity in the death of 170,000 people when he worked as an SS guard between 1942 and 1944, the DPA news agency said.

During the four-month trial in the western city of Detmold, Hanning admitted knowing about the mass killings at the camp in southern occupied Poland but said he had no direct role in the killings.

“You were at Auschwitz for nearly two-and-a-half years and therefore you aided in the mass killings,” Judge Anke Grudda said.

The court heard how Hanning met prisoners as they arrived at the camp and possibly marched some to the gas chambers.

Around 1.1 million people, mostly Jews from across Europe, were killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex between 1940 and 1945.

Welcoming the verdict, the World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder said: “This trial came decades late but we welcome the fact that it took place.”

In the statement, Lauder said Hanning had been “part of a merciless killing machine.”

The case is likely to be the last trial of Nazis involved in the genocide that saw around 11 million people, including six million Jews, murdered by the regime.