Ex-Trusty at Nazi Camp Sentenced in Death of Inmate
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WEST BERLIN — A former concentration camp prisoner, entrusted by SS guards with overseeing fellow inmates, was jailed for 10 years today for sadistically beating a 49-year-old Polish man to death.
A West Berlin court found 74-year-old Otto Heidemann guilty of leading fellow prisoner Jozef Wojdanowski away from a work party at a quarry belonging to the Mauthausen concentration camp in January, 1941, and beating and kicking him to death behind a pile of rubble.
Heidemann, who denied the charges, was on a stretcher in the courtroom as he heard Judge Hans Pruefer pass sentence.
The court decided that prisoner-overseers at Mauthausen had been told by SS guards to kill inmates who could no longer work. But Heidemann’s action in killing Wojdanowski must be considered a crime even in the conditions of the Nazi period, the judge added.
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