In 1942, a 21-year-old named Josef Schütz joined the Waffen-SS and was posted to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, just north of Berlin. Over the next three years, more than 200,000 people passed through that camp. Tens of thousands never left.

 

In 1942, a 21-year-old named Josef Schütz joined the Waffen-SS and was posted to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, just north of Berlin. Over the next three years, more than 200,000 people passed through that camp. Tens of thousands never left.

For nearly 80 years, he lived freely. He returned to Germany after a stint in a Soviet prison camp, worked as a farmer and a locksmith, and settled quietly in Brandenburg. No one came looking, until German prosecutors, working off a legal precedent set in 2011, started tracing SS personnel records that still bore his name, birth date, and assignment to Sachsenhausen's "Totenkopf" division.

In October 2021, at the age of 100, he went on trial. He was only fit to sit in court for about two and a half hours a day. The proceedings were held in a gymnasium because no courtroom could accommodate the arrangements his health required.

He denied everything. He claimed he'd spent the war working as a farmer and had never even worn an SS uniform. His story kept shifting under questioning, and the documents told a different one.

In June 2022, at 101, he was found guilty on 3,518 counts of being an accessory to murd€r, the oldest person ever tried, and ever c0nvicted, for crimes committed under the Nazi regime. The judge told him directly that his presence at the camp had supported every k!lling that took place there. He was sentenced to five years. Given his age, he was never expected to serve any of it.

He showed no remorse, right to the end. He d!ed in April 2023, at 102, while his appeal was still pending.

Eighty years is a long time to wait for a reckoning. But for the families of the 3,518 people he helped k!ll, it still came