• Stutthof: SS guard judged for complicity in deaths in Nazi concentration camp
  • Germany: Five years in prison for Demjanjuk for collaborating in the murder of 27,900 Jews
  • World War II. About 2,000 possible former members of the SS receive a war pension from the German state

Guilty. That was the verdict handed down today by the Juvenile Chamber of the Hamburg Territorial Court in the process against the nonagenarian Bruno Dey, a former Nazi SS guard in the Stutthof concentration camp , for collaboration in the death of at least 5,230 people due to gas chambers, disease or hunger. When these events occurred, Dey was 17 years old, hence he was tried as a minor.

The sentence has been consistent. They will be two years on probation , one less than what the Prosecutor's Office requested because he considered him, albeit a minor, a "piece in the murderous apparatus" of the Third Reich and attending to the age of the accused, 93 years old today. The defense asked for his acquittal.

The trial, which started in the spring, is expected to be the last against the crimes of National Socialism in Germany, given the advanced age of the cases still under investigation, a total of 14, and the lack of witnesses.

The charges against Dey corresponded to the time he served at Stutthof, a compound opened by the Nazis in the vicinity of Gdansk , shortly after Hitler occupied Poland. At first Polish intellectuals were held, but as the war progressed, Stutthof became part of the Jewish extermination network.

Dey was a guard at one of the camp's watchtowers between August 1944 and April 1945 , a period in which it is estimated that at least 5,232 inmates died. Historians estimate that in total 100,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, were killed there.

"The soldiers in the towers had everything in sight. They saw everything, they knew what was happening and therefore I will never forgive them," said Rosa Bloch, a survivor of Stutthof , during the process . The 89-year-old witness was 14 years old at the time and of all the atrocities that she recounted to the court, her most recurring memory was the hunger that passed. "I once asked a guardian for an extra serving of soup, but what I received was beatings. He wanted to kill me."

Among the tasks assigned to the Stutthof guards was to prevent prisoners from escaping, to detect attempts at revolt or liberation. "They were hunting dogs," said Bloch, born in Ukraine and deported to Stutthof with her mother. Her father was brought to Dachau.

A NORMAL LIFE UNTIL 2019

Dey apologized to Sttuthof's victims for everything he did not do. "I have never stopped blaming myself," he said . He also assured that he did not serve there voluntarily, but was recruited by the SS and assigned to that place.

Dey led a normal existence in Germany for decades and Justice did not open proceedings against him for not holding him directly responsible for war crimes. But in April 2019, a formal accusation was presented against him, taking as a precedent the sentence against former Ukrainian guard John Demjanjuk , sentenced in 2011 to five years in prison for complicity in the deaths of the Sobibor death camp in the territory of Poland. busy.

His trial established jurisprudence and other processes followed, despite the difficulties derived from having survivors with the capacity to recognize direct involvement of the accused.

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  • Germany
  • Poland
  • Ukraine
  • Adolf Hitler
  • Second World War

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