A 94-year-old former SS sergeant who served at the Auschwitz death camp has been convicted on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder.
The state court in the northern German city of Lueneburg gave Oskar Groening, known as the bookkeeper of Auschwitz, a four-year sentence.
Groening has testified that he guarded prisoners' baggage after they arrived at Auschwitz and collected money stolen from them. Prosecutors said that amounts to helping the death camp function.
The charges against Groening related to a period between May and July 1944 when hundreds of thousands of Jews from Hungary were brought to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in Nazi-occupied Poland. Most were immediately gassed to death.
On Tuesday, a lawyer for the former SS sergeant urged the court to acquit his client. Lawyer Hans Holtermann said in his closing arguments that as far as the law is concerned Groening did not facilitate mass murder.
Another defense lawyer, Susanne Frangenberg, called for Groening not to be punished if he is convicted. She pointed to the delay in bringing him to trial and to his openness about his past, which is unusual for trials of former Nazi camp guards.