A 94-year-old former Auschwitz death camp guard has been convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 170,000 people at the end of a four-month trial – which is likely to be the last of its kind.

Reinhold Hanning was sentenced on Friday to five years in prison for his role in facilitating the slaughter at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, although he will remain free pending appeal.

The trial, held at the Detmold court in west Germany, represented equally a last chance to establish a historical reckoning with the Nazi Holocaust as an opportunity to bring the retired dairy farmer to justice more than 70 years after the end of the war.

“You were in Auschwitz for two and a half years, performed an important function,” said the judge, Anke Grudda. “You were part of a criminal organisation and took part in criminal activity in Auschwitz.” Grudda said Hanning could have chosen a different path.

“It is not true that you had no choice; you could have asked to be transferred to the war front,” she told him.

Hanning showed no reaction.