John Demjanjuk will not go to prison yet, despite being convicted as an accessory to the murder of more than 27,000 people at Sobibor during the Holocaust.
Demjanjuk, who denied working as a concentration camp guard during the nearly 18-month-long trial in Munich, was sentenced to five years behind bars.
But a judge said the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk would be freed pending appeal because the 91-year-old was not a flight risk.
Delivering the verdict Judge Ralph Alt said Demjanjuk was a piece of the Nazis' "machinery of destruction".
He said the court was "convinced that the defendant served as a guard at Sobibor from 27 March 1943 to mid September 1943".
