“You know what happened to all the people, you enabled their murder”, she said to Hanning.
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The 94-year-old was found guilty of being an accessory to 170,000 murders during his time in the camp in Nazi occupied Poland because he helped “underwrite the Nazi murder machine”.
Hanning admitted to knowing about the mass murder perpetrated at the camp and said that he was sorry, but insisted that he had not killed anyone personally.
“I deeply regret having listened to a criminal organisation that is responsible for the deaths of many innocent people, for the destruction of countless families, for the misery, distress and suffering on the part of victims and their relatives”.
Over the course of the trial, many Holocaust survivors shared their stories and spoke in support of Hanning’s conviction.
Of more than 6,500 former SS personnel at Auschwitz who survived World War II, fewer than 50 have been convicted of atrocities by the German justice system.
Defendant Reinhold Hanning, a 94-year-old former guard at Auschwitz death camp, holds a glass of water as he sits in a courtroom before the continuation of his trial in Detmold, Germany, May 20, 2016. Hanning was 18 when he volunteered for the SS and apologized during the trial for his participation in “such a criminal organization”, though he denied involvement in any deaths at the camp. He usually used a wheelchair but sometimes walked into the courtroom on his own.
But now several camp guards are being put on trial for being an accessory to murder, with the thinking being that they have culpability even if they did not directly kill or torture.
“I am ashamed that I saw injustice and never did anything about it and I apologize for my actions”, Hanning said during his trial in front of the Detmold state court, the AP reported.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s chief Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, welcomed Friday’s conviction but also called on German authorities to “do everything in their power to expedite the remaining cases”.
In her ruling, Grudda said much of their testimony put to rest any criticism that the crimes of the Nazis were too far in the past to prosecute today.
Hanning’s case is similar to other trials of former Nazis that prosecutors in Germany have pursued more aggressively in recent years. Prosecutors in Demjanjuk’s case did not attempt to present evidence that linked him to specific abuses or murders, instead arguing that he was guilty of participating in the crimes committed at Sobibor simply by working at a camp whose sole objective was extermination.
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Will Hanning be last Holocaust-era case? “If the cases will make it to trial, that’s hard to say. You can’t really look into the future – but we have the mandate to keep investigating as long as there’s still the possibility of finding someone”, he said.
