Mord verjährt nicht

There is no statute of limitations on murder.

A year ago, the trial of Bruno D., a 93-year-old who had been a guard at the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk in his younger days, came to an end. The court sentenced him to two years of juvenile detention - he was 17 in 1944 (!) - on probation.

Was it necessary to subject an aged man to a protracted trial?

He was not the last. On July 16, the prosecutor in Itzehoe opened the proceedings against a 96-year-old former secretary of the same concentration camp. She is accused of aiding and abetting more than 11,000 cases of murder.

Defendants are getting older, and more than 76 years after the end of World War II, another Nazi trial will take place in the fall. Following longish deliberations, the judiciary in Neuruppin has admitted the charges against a 100-year-old former concentration camp guard. Murder has no statute of limitations, and even older people must stand trial.

Entrance to the prisoners' camp Sachsenhausen,
nowadays, the memorial site (©dpa-infocom)

The man served in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from January 1942 to February 1945.

The trial is scheduled for early October. Court president Frank Stark said, "The defendant should be fit to stand trial for two to two and a half hours a day."

Prisoners at roll call in Sachsenhausen concentration camp (©Bundesarchiv)

Just north of Berlin, Sachsenhausen was the setting for the Nazi leadership's delusion of rule over life and death. The lawyer of the joint plaintiffs, Thomas Walther, said, "Many of my clients are of the same age as the accused and hope for justice."

The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was the training ground for guards and camp commanders throughout the Nazi terror system. The SS, with a large contingent in the camp, held about 200,000 prisoners over the years. They murdered around 20,000 there.
*