A former SS officer has been sentenced to four years in prison for complicity in the murder of at least 60 Jews in the Majdanek death camp near Lublin, Poland.
He may also have been involved in the killing of 380 other inmates.
But the Bielefeld court that passed sentence last week decided that 77-year-old Karl-Friedrich Hoecker would be allowed to stay at home, pending a possible appeal.
The court was sure the prisoner would not try to escape, because he has strong personal ties in town and is undergoing medical treatment.
After nine months of deliberation, a panel of judges found May 3 that Hoecker was an “armchair culprit” whose job was to order the deadly Zyklon B gas used in the Majdanek gas chambers, where some 250,000 Jews perished.
Hoecker served at the camp in 1943. Witnesses at the trial described him as a cruel man who gladly resorted to sadistic practices in dealing with Jewish inmates.
But he told the court last month that he did not kill or hurt a single inmate during his service in Majdanek.
In 1965, Hoecker drew a seven-year sentence for his role in the killings of at least 3,000 inmates, mostly Jews, in Auschwitz. He was released in 1970, after serving five years.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
