Reinhold Hanning, who served as an SS guard at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland, died on Tuesday at the age of 95.
He was convicted last June for complicity in 170,000 murders and sentenced to five years in prison (that’s one year for every 34,000 murders). The murders were carried out between 1943 and 1944. The court ruled that Hanning had been “aware that in Auschwitz innocent people were murdered every day in gas chambers.”
Only 43 Auschwitz staff members have been sentenced in German courts.
Hanning said he was sorry for his role in so many murders, but attorneys for the victims argued that his show of remorse was fake and that he downplayed his role in the atrocities.
Thomas Walther, a lawyer for 40 out of 57 victims involved in the suit from around the world, told the court that “from the perspective of the plaintiffs, his statement is an inadequate attempt to make excuses in order to not take any responsibility,” and accused Hanning of acting as if he were “an uninvolved bystander.”
Hanning’s sentence had not yet been finalized by the time of his death, because the German federal court was still reviewing his request to revise the sentence.
According to German media, 28 Nazis are still being prosecuted for war crimes, and the vast majority of them are over 90.