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However, Schuetz's five-year sentence is the longest so far handed to a defendant in such a case. Both were convicted at the age of 94 of complicity in mass murder but died before they could be imprisoned. Among those brought to late justice were Oskar Groening, an accountant at Auschwitz, and Reinhold Hanning, a former SS guard at Auschwitz. Since then, courts have handed down several guilty verdicts on those grounds rather than for murders or atrocities directly linked to the individual accused. The 2011 conviction of former guard John Demjanjuk, on the basis that he served as part of Hitler's killing machine, set a legal precedent and paved the way for several of these justice cases. More than seven decades after World War II, German prosecutors are racing to bring the last surviving Nazi perpetrators to justice. 'Warning to perpetrators' - After the war, Schuetz was transferred to a prison camp in Russia before returning to Germany, where he worked as a farmer and a locksmith. At one point, the centenarian said he had worked as an agricultural labourer in Germany for most of World War II, a claim contradicted by several historical documents bearing his name, date and place of birth. During the trial, Schuetz had made several inconsistent statements about his past, complaining that his head was getting 'mixed up'. But Antoine Grumbach, 80, whose father died in Sachsenhausen, said he could 'never forgive' Schuetz as 'any human being facing atrocities has a duty to oppose them'. Thomas Walther, the lawyer who represented 11 of the 16 civil parties in the trial, said the sentencing had met their expectations and 'justice has been served'. His lawyer, Stefan Waterkamp, told AFP he would appeal - meaning the sentence will not be enforced until 2023 at the earliest. Schuetz was not detained during the trial, which began in 2021 but was postponed several times because of his health. 'I am ready,' he said when he entered the courtroom earlier in a wheelchair, dressed in a grey shirt and striped trousers. Contradictory statements - Schuetz, who was 21 when he began working at the camp, remained blank-faced as the court announced his sentence.

Tens of thousands of inmates died from forced labour, murder, medical experiments, hunger or disease before the camp was liberated by Soviet troops, according to the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum. So every guard was actively involved in these murders.' More than 200,000 people, including Jews, Roma, regime opponents and gay people, were detained at the Sachsenhausen camp between 19. 'Anyone who tried to escape from the camp was shot. 'Due to your position on the watchtower of the concentration camp, you constantly had the smoke of the crematorium in your nose,' he said. 'For three years, you watched prisoners being tortured and killed before your eyes,' Lechtermann said.

But presiding judge Udo Lechtermann said he was convinced Schuetz had worked at Sachsenhausen and had 'supported' the atrocities committed there.

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'I don't know why I am here,' he said at the close of his trial on Monday. The pensioner, who now lives in Brandenburg state, had pleaded innocent, saying he did 'absolutely nothing' and had not even worked at the camp. He is highly unlikely to be put behind bars given his age. Josef Schuetz was found guilty of being an accessory to murder in at least 3,500 cases while working as a prison guard at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 19. A German court on Tuesday handed a five-year jail sentence to a 101-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, the oldest person so far to go on trial for complicity in war crimes during the Holocaust.