A 94-year-old former Auschwitz death camp guard is expected to hear his fate on Friday at the end of a four-month trial that is likely to be one of the last court cases of its kind.
Reinhold Hanning stands accused of being an accessory to murder in more than 170,000 cases. But the trial, being held at the Detmold court in west Germany, has represented equally a last chance to establish a historical reckoning with the Nazi Holocaust as it has been about bringing the retired dairy farmer to justice more than 70 years after the end of the war.
Scores of Holocaust survivors and historians gave testimony to the court, but Hanning – who became a junior squadron leader with the SS – avoided their gaze.
The prosecution’s case has been built on the premise that, however low his rank, Hanning’s presence at Auschwitz made him part of the Nazi death machine and that he should therefore share responsibility for the Holocaust in which six million people, mostly European Jews, were murdered.
Until 2011, prosecutions for involvement in the Holocaust were only considered possible if it could be proved the individual was directly responsible for murder or torture.
The Hanning case has concentrated on the Hungary Operation, which took place over three months, from May to July 1944, when about 425,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, in Nazi-occupied Poland; 300,000 of them were gassed to death immediately on arrival.
Prosecutors argue that the episode serves to underline the industrialised nature of the Nazi slaughter machine that depended on the participation of a massive network of people carrying out orders, however large or small. They have produced evidence that Hanning was in Auschwitz during the Hungary operation and is therefore directly implicated.
Initially, Hanning refused to speak, provoking frustration and anger among the survivors in the courtroom and those following the trial around the world.
Angered by his silence, Angela Orosz, 71, who was born at the concentration camp in December 1944, flew from her home in Toronto, Canada, shortly after the start of the proceedings and took to the witness stand to urge him: “You know what happened to all the people. You enabled their murder. Tell us! Tell us!”
Orosz told the Guardian that what mattered was what Hanning told the court about “what happened in Auschwitz, what he did in Auschwitz, what he saw in Auschwitz”, because it would go on record and “enter the history books, so that even if some people might say ‘the Jews are lying’ they will hear from the mouth of the Nazi what happened”.
Hanning did not divulge any of the details of his working life at the camp but he made a surprise statement in April asking for forgiveness.
“I was silent my whole life,” he told a hushed court, which strained to hear his quiet, rasping, voice. “I want to say to you that I’m deeply regretful at having belonged to a criminal organisation that was responsible for the death of vast numbers of people, for the destruction of countless numbers of families, for misery, torture and suffering on the part of the victims and their relatives. I am ashamed to have stood by and watch those injustices happen and to have done nothing to prevent them.”
In an earlier statement read by his lawyer, Johannes Salmen, Hanning insisted he had been sent to Auschwitz after he was injured in the head by a grenade in Kiev. “The head of my unit said ‘Hanning, you can’t even wear a helmet’, so he thought it a good idea to send me to Auschwitz for internal service,” he said.
In his closing statement, Salmen argued that his client’s age when he joined the SS – he was 18 when he joined the Totenkopf (Death’s Head) division – should be considered to be a mitigating factor. “You can’t act today as if the defendant was a fully-grown man back then who knew just what he was doing,” he said.
But some of the survivors, who had come from Canada, Britain, Hungary, the US and Germany to give witness statements, were angered by what they saw as Hanning’s suggestion that he could not have avoided being sent to serve in Auschwitz. Thomas Walther, a lawyer for some of the co-plaintiffs, said his statement was “without substance”.
One of the most dramatic encounters occurred when Leon Schwarzbaum, also 94, took to the witness stand and told Hanning to speak out before he died. “Mr Hanning, we are virtually the same age and soon we will face our final judge. I would like to ask you to tell the historical truth here, just as I am,” the Berliner told him.
The trial, like others in recent years, gave survivors the chance to speak out for the first time.
“This is to do with throwing light on what happened, with ensuring that something like this never happens again,” said Marcus Goldbach, a lawyer for one of the victims.
Court proceedings have been reduced to just two hours a day to take into account Hanning’s poor health and age.
Hanging over the proceedings – and other similar cases in which ageing men have been brought to trial for their role as concentration camp employees – is the question of what good it can do to punish people so late in life and in bad health.
Hanning’s trial followed that of Oskar Gröning, an SS recruit known as the book-keeper of Auschwitz, who in 2015 received a four-year prison sentence for his role as an Auschwitz guard. He has appealed against the sentence and is unlikely ever to serve any time.
Another case being heard by a German court is that of a former SS medic, Hubert Zafke, although it has already been adjourned twice on health grounds, putting the proceedings in doubt.
A trial of a 92-year-old female radio operator, identified only as Helma M, is expected to open shortly.
Orosz said: “So what if it’s a death sentence for him? With 94 you have no life expectancy anyway … and what about my father who was murdered at the age of 32, while someone like him was able to live happily ever after? He’s not going to be going to jail anyway.”
Prosecutors have called for a six-year sentence for Hanning, while his lawyer said he should be acquitted because there was “no proof” he was involved in any killings or torture and he had not worked in Birkenau, the part of the camp where the gassings were done.
