Former guard of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, Reinhold Hanning, has been sentenced to five years in prison by the court of the provincial town of Detmold in western Germany, RIA Novosti reports, citing Bild.

The man is charged with accessory to murder of at least 100,000 people.  The defendant recognized that he was a guard at SS camp and knew about the mass killings. Earlier, Mr Hanning apologized to the camp victims, stating: “I am ashamed that I witnessed injustice and let it happen without doing anything against it.”

His lawyer read a detailed 22-page declaration on the views of his client on his life and especially the time spent at Auschwitz, which he called “nightmare”. Mr Hanning voluntarily joined SS in 1940, when he was 18, at the urging of his stepmother, who was a Nazi party member.  

Nearly 1,4 million people, 1.1 million of which were Jews, were killed in Auschwitz in 1941-1945. The camp was liberated on 24 January 1945 by the Red Army troops.