German justice sentenced, Thursday, July 23, a 93-year-old former Nazi camp guard to two years in prison, after one of the last trials relating to the atrocities committed under the Third Reich.

Bruno Dey, who was a guard at the Stutthof concentration camp in northern Poland, "is found guilty of aiding and abetting 5,232 cases of murders and attempted murders," said Hamburg court president Anne Meier-Göring .

For the prosecution, the nonagenarian, appeared throughout the hearings in a wheelchair and accompanied by his relatives, supported the Nazi extermination machine. A three-year prison sentence had been requested, on the basis of the juvenile legislation since the accused was between 17 and 18 years old at the time of the facts. Bruno Dey's lawyer had demanded a dismissal.

On Monday, the accused apologized "to those who have gone through this hell of madness", saying that he really became aware, over the nine months of trial and the forty testimonies, of "the full extent of the cruelty "of the acts committed at Stutthof.

In all, some 65,000 people, mainly Jews from the Baltic States and Poland, died there, shot in the back of the neck, gassed with Zyklon B, and hanged. Or they have succumbed to the cold, epidemics and forced labor.

Not worried at the end of the war

This camp, the first established outside Germany in 1939, was gradually integrated into the system of extermination of the Jews.

Bruno Dey, posted on one of the watchtowers overlooking it, had the duty to prevent any revolt or flight.

Does that make him a culprit? The man says no. He never "directly hurt someone". He never "volunteered to join the SS or serve in a death camp," but had no choice but to accept his posting, he says.

Confronted with such crimes, "it is no longer enough to look away and wait for it to stop," replied Attorney General Lars Mahnke in his indictment. He could thus have asked to be reinstated in the army. However, this would undoubtedly have meant to be sent to the Eastern Front.

Difficult to wait until a teenager dares to "stand out in this way" in the context of absolute obedience required at the time, for his part argued his lawyer, Stefan Waterkamp. We must take into account the fact that "serving in a concentration camp was not considered a crime at the time," he also argued.

Briefly a prisoner of war after 1945, Bruno Dey was not subsequently worried. He made his life in Hamburg, was a baker, truck driver and janitor, started a family.

Last trial?

Seventy-five years after the end of World War II, this trial could well be the last of its kind because of the old age of the protagonists.

Last week, the Wuppertal court announced the indictment of another 95-year-old former Stutthof guard, again for complicity in murders. A trial is far from certain.

About thirty procedures are still underway, according to German media.

In recent years, Germany has tried and condemned several former SS and extended to camp guards the charge of complicity in murder, illustrating the increased severity, although judged very late by the victims, of its justice.

The most emblematic case was the sentencing to 5 years in prison of the former guard of the Sobibor extermination camp John Demjanjuk, in 2011. He died the following year.

Bruno Dey is unlikely to be sent to prison. But for the prosecution, it was essential that his guilt be recognized by the judges of the Hamburg court.

With AFP

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