Free Republic

Following the sentencing of 94-year-old Reinhold Hanning to 5 years in prison for his part in the murder of 170,000 Jews in the Holocaust, his lawyers have announced that they will appeal the sentence. The prosecution, representing Holocaust victims, will also appeal the leniency of the sentence. Hanning was convicted 10 days ago by a court in Detmold, Germany, for aiding the murder of 170,000 inmates at Aushwitz-Birkenau. The judges in the case found that Hanning worked as a guard in the German extermination camp on Polish soil in the years 1941-1944, while being involved in the deaths of 170,000...

A 94-year-old former SS sergeant admitted in court Friday that he had served as an Auschwitz death camp guard, apologizing to Nazi Holocaust survivors looking on in a German courtroom that even though he was aware Jews were being gassed and their corpses burned, he did nothing to try to stop it. Reinhold Hanning told the Detmould state court that he had never spoken about his service in Auschwitz from January 1942 to June 1944, even to his family, but wanted to use his trial as an opportunity to set the record straight. "I want to say that it disturbs...