Ex-Nazi concentration camp guard won’t testify at trial, says lawyer

A 100-year-old former guard at a Nazi concentration camp will not speak about his time at the site, his lawyer tells a German courtroom at the opening of the landmark trial.

“The accused will not speak, but will only provide information about his personal situation,” lawyer Stefan Waterkamp, who is representing Josef Schuetz, tells the court.

The suspect stands accused of “knowingly and willingly” assisting in the murder of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.

Allegations against him include aiding and abetting the “execution by firing squad of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942” and the murder of prisoners “using the poisonous gas Zyklon B.”