linksunten Archiv

- Former SS guard Jakob Wendel, 91, claims he was a victim of the regime too - He insists he bears no responsibility or guilt for his role in the Holocaust - Wendel served just five years for the part he played in mass exterminations - Father-of-three lives in a large apartment on an affluent estate near Stuttgart

One of Hitler's former SS henchman who rounded up Jews at the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp has insisted that he is a victim - after his pension was cut by £47 a month.

Jakob Wendel, 91, complained that he was being punished 70 years after the Holocaust and said that he bears no responsibility or guilt for his role in the atrocity.

A law was passed making it possible to dock the pensions of those who violated 'principles of humanity' during the period of Nazi rule.

Wendel, who served just five years for the part he played in the mass exterminations, spoke to a German magazine about his role unloading the trains at Auschwitz on condition of anonymity.

But The Sun has named the former Nazi, and he complained to the newspaper about losing the £47 of his pension.

He said: 'I was a victim of the regime too.

'I was robbed of ten years of my life by the German army. Around here, not many people know about it - I don't want them to know about it.

'Why should I be held responsible after 70 years?'

The father-of-three now lives with his wife in a large apartment on an affluent estate near Stuttgart, in southern Germany.

He was one of 30 surviving Nazis targeted in 2013 as accessories to multiple murder, because the former SS man's role in the the selection committee at Auschwitz was deemed so significant.

But German prosecutors were forced to abandon the case last month because Wendel had already served five years over the part he played in the Holocaust after he was sentenced by a Polish court in 1948.

The punishment would have been greater but Jewish survivors sent to identify their captors after the war did not pick him out from the ranks of PoWs.

Wendel, who is originally from Germany grew up near Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and was drafted into the SS in 1942 when he was 19. 

He was posted at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for two and a half years until 1945.

The former Nazi avoided justice in the 1970s when he lied to prosecutors and failed to mention he was part of the selection committee at Auschwitz.

The infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was originally used to house Polish political prisoners, but from spring 1942, it became the largest site for the murder of Jews. More than 1.1 million men, women, and children lost their lives there.

But Wendel remained unrepentant when he spoke to The Sun.

He said: 'I sleep soundly because I did not do anything wrong. I knew it was a gas chamber. I never saw what happened inside, but you knew what they were.

'Many people arrived in trains and no one left. I never saw how they were killed in there but I knew no one came out.

'I can remember the smoke and the smell. I knew it was people burning. I never thought it was good, but I couldn't do anything.'

Campaigners last night called for him to pay for the crimes he committed at the concentration camp.

Dr Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center human rights organisation, said: 'I would like to see him put on trial and to end his miserable life in a prison cell.'