German justice delivers its verdict on Thursday against a 93-year-old former Nazi camp guard after one of the last trials relating to atrocities committed under the Third Reich.
Bruno Dey is accused of complicity in 5,230 murders perpetrated between August 1944 and April 1945, when he was a guard at the Stutthof concentration camp, in northern Poland.
For the prosecution, the nonagenarian, appeared throughout the hearings in a wheelchair and accompanied by his relatives, supported the Nazi extermination machine. He is asking for a three-year prison sentence, on the basis of the juvenile legislation because he was between 17 and 18 years old at the time of the facts. His lawyer asks him to dismiss him.
The apologies of the accused for those passed "by this hell of madness"
The judges of the Hamburg court are due to announce their decision this Thursday morning. 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 total, some 65,000 people, mostly Jews from the Baltic countries and Poland, died there, shot in the back of the neck, gassed with Zyklon B, hanged. Or they have succumbed to the cold, epidemics and forced labor.
Posted on one of the watchtowers
This camp, the first established outside Germany in 1939, was gradually integrated into the system of extermination of the Jews.
The accused, posted on one of the watchtowers overlooking it, had the duty to prevent any revolt or flight. Does that make him a culprit? He 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.
Faced 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.
After the war, baker, truck driver, janitor ...
Difficult to wait for a teenager to dare 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 of the Nazi extermination?
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.
Unlikely that Bruno Dey will be sent to prison
Bruno Dey is unlikely to be sent to prison. But for the prosecution, it is essential that his guilt be recognized. “Whether indirectly or directly, he participated in a murder. He's a criminal, ”said Marek Dunin-Wasowicz, a survivor and co-complainant in an interview with AFP.
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