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Nazi Guard Gets Life Term in Murder of Jewish Prisoner

March 12, 1952
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Hans Steinbrenner, former Nazi guard at the Dachau concentration camp, was sentenced to life imprisonment yesterday for the murder of a Jewish inmate of the camp. The same German court sentenced him to 10 years in jail for another murder and an accomplice to six years on various charges of assault.

Steinbrenner defended his killing the Jewish prisoner on the grounds that as a guard he was “a tool of a legal state, and I believe orders are orders.” He explained that he had entered the cell of one of his victims, thrust a knife in the Jew’s hand and then shot him in “self defense.”

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