A 93-yr-aged former Nazi concentration camp guard was convicted Thursday in Germany of becoming an accessory in the murder of more than 5,200 prisoners – but bought off with a two-year suspended prison sentence.
Bruno Dey, whose trial started in October, was convicted in a Hamburg court of 5,232 counts of accessory to murder, German information company dpa claimed – or just one depend for each individual victim considered to have been killed during his time at the Stutthof focus camp in 1944 and 1945.
Dey, whose circumstance was heard in juvenile court docket due to the fact he was 17 and 18 at the time, was also convicted of a single of accent to tried murder. Prosecutors experienced sought a three-calendar year sentence for Dey, whose lawyers argued to have him acquitted.
Dey had formerly confessed to becoming a guard at the camp, but insisted he had no selection throughout his demo, which integrated a lot more than 40 co-plaintiffs from France, Israel, Poland and the US, CNN reports.
Dey, according to his 2019 indictment, supported the “insidious and cruel killing” at Stutthof concentration camp in what was then occupied Poland.
In a assertion to the court docket before this 7 days, the wheelchair-sure Dey stated he was “shaken” by the witness accounts and apologized to “those who went via the hell of this madness,” BBC reviews.
But he also claimed he was not aware of the “extent of the atrocities” until his trial, irrespective of acknowledging that he knew of fuel chambers and looking at “emaciated figures” and “people who suffered” at the death camp, the BBC stories.
Prosecutors disputed that declare, declaring Dey was well informed of the mass killings and actively stopped prisoners from escaping.
“When you are a aspect of mass-murder machinery, it is not ample to glimpse away,” prosecutor Lars Mahnke reported.
Additional than 65,000 folks are thought to have died at Stutthof, wherever guards began applying gasoline chambers in June 1944.
Dey’s sentence, meanwhile, was blasted as also gentle by the head Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s business in Jerusalem.
“We’re incredibly happy he’s convicted but upset about the sentence, which in a selected perception is an insult to the survivors,” Efraim Zuroff told the Connected Press. “There has to be some factor of punishment.”
With Post wires
