Jun 18, 2016 thevillagessuntimes.com
A 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard gets 5 years in prison
By Paul Elliott

Several equally elderly Auschwitz survivors gave evidence at the trial about their own experiences, and were among about 40 survivors or their families who joined the process as co-plaintiffs as allowed under German law.

One of them, Hedy Bohm, 88, whose parents perished in Auschwitz, said: "I am grateful and pleased to be here at this moment, when justice was finally done after 70 years. I don't want him to go to prison, but he should have spoken up more, especially for the younger generation that's growing up today". He said Hanning never killed or beat anyone. The four-month trial of a former Auschwitz death camp guard has come to an end and has been found guilty. He had faced a maximum of 15 years.

The defence said Hanning should be acquitted as the former SS officer had personally never killed, beaten or abused anyone. Reinhold Hanning served an SS guard at Auschwitz during Nazi-occupied Poland between January 1943 and June 1944. "We wanted him to take responsibility for whatever he did and tell the world what went on in Auschwitz". In closing arguments Saturday, defense lawyer Johannes Salmen said the trial at the Detmold state court produced no evidence that Reinhold Hanning was directly involved in specific crimes, news agency dpa reported.

Prosecutors are to decide next month whether 92-year-old Helma Mass, a former radio operator in Auschwitz, is fit enough to stand trial for her role in the murders of 266,390 people. More than 1 million people were systematically murdered at the camp during World War II. Reinhold Hanning has said he is "ashamed" of his actions. Last year a German court sentenced Oskar Groening, 94, to four years in jail as an accessory to the murder of at least 300,000 people at Auschwitz. Germany's highest appeals court is expected to rule on the validity of the Groening verdict sometime this summer. Hanning's attorney, Andreas Scharmer, will likely appeal the decision, adding "I didn't expect the court to have the courage for an acquittal".

The Demjanjuk case set a legal precedent, in that being a guard at a death camp was sufficient to prove complicity in murder. Investigations also were helped by tips from the public, after Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Jerusalem office announced a reward for information leading to the conviction of Nazi war criminals in what the center called "Operation Last Chance". According to The Guardian, 71-year-old Angela Orosz Richt-Bein, a survivor of the Holocaust, said: "People like you, Mr Hanning, made the hell of Auschwitz possible".

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