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Josef Schütz (16 November 1920 – 13 April 2023), known in the German press as Josef S.,[1] was a Lithuanian-born German Nazi concentration camp guard who was stationed at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In June 2022, at the age of 101, Schütz was handed a five-year sentence after a criminal trial for complicity in war crimes during the Holocaust during World War II, becoming the oldest person tried and convicted for Nazi war crimes in Germany.
Josef Schütz | |
|---|---|
| Other name(s) | Josef S. (in German press) |
| Born | 16 November 1920 Lithuania |
| Died | 13 April 2023 (aged 102) Germany |
| Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
| Service | Waffen-SS |
| Rank | Rottenführer |
| Known for | Sachsenhausen concentration camp guard |
Josef Schütz was born in Lithuania on 16 November 1920.[2][3][4] By 1942, he was working in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where one of his duties was being stationed in the watchtower.[5] During Schütz's tenure at the camp, there were three camp commandants under whom Schütz worked: Hans Loritz (1942), Albert Sauer (1942–1943), and Anton Kaindl (1943–1945). Schütz remained at the camp until the end of the war in 1945.[2] After the war, he was released as a prisoner of war in 1947, after which he moved to East Germany where he worked as a locksmith.[2] He was at one point married, but in 1986 became a widower.[2] By 2021, he lived in the northeast state of Brandenburg, Germany.[6]
 | This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: What happened in the ten months between sentencing and death?. (April 2023) |
The trial opened on 7 October 2021, when Schütz was 100, in the Neuruppin Regional Court in Brandenburg, during which he was charged with 3,518 counts of being an accessory to murder.[9] The 17 co-plaintiffs were represented by Thomas Walther, who had previously won a conviction against former Ukrainian-American Waffen-SS guard John Demjanjuk a decade earlier in 2011.[6] Schütz was represented by Stefan Waterkamp.[10] While Schütz has been identified internationally, during and after the trial he is known in Germany only by his first name and last initial due to that country's privacy laws.[11] He pleaded not guilty.[12]
During the trial, Schütz stated he did "absolutely nothing" wrong and was not aware of the atrocities happening at Sachsenhausen.[13] Instead, he stated he worked as a "farm laborer near Pasewalk in northeastern Germany during the period in question", a claim which the court rejected.[13] The court used historical documents to prove he worked at the camp and was a non-commissioned officer in the Waffen-SS.[3] Testimonies of survivors were also heard, including from Leon Schwarzbaum, who showed a picture of his family who had died in the camp.[14] Schütz was sentenced to five years in prison for the crimes; when he arrived in court in a wheelchair to hear the verdict on 28 June 2022, he hid his face from the press with a folder to avoid being recognized.[4] During the verdict reading, Judge Udo Lechtermann stated, "You willingly supported this mass extermination with your activity."[1] The timeframe for appeal would have been within one week of the verdict.[4]
Schütz was the oldest person to be tried and convicted for Nazi-era war crimes in Germany.[15]
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