A 93-year-old man was convicted by a court in Germany for his role in the death of thousands of people at a Nazi concentration camp. The man served as a guard at the camp during World War II.
Nazi camp
On July 23, a court in Hamburg, Germany gave the 93-year-old Bruno Dey a two-year suspended sentence for assisting in the murder of 5,200 prisoners at the Stutthof camp. Dey served as a guard in 1944 at the Nazi concentration camp, he was only 17-years-old at the time so his hearing took place in a juvenile court.
The Associated Press reported that the prosecutors tried to call for a three-year sentence for Dey and argued that he had aided the Nazis as a "small wheel in the machinery of murder." He was a guard at a tower at the camp.
Meanwhile, the old man's defense attorney argued that even though Dey served as a prison guard, he was not directly involved in the murders that happened in the camp. Dey admitted that he saw the prisoners in the camp and he knew that they were sent to the gas chambers, according to BBC.
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Judge Anne Meier-Goring echoed the prosecution's argument in her verdict and said that even though Dey was not directly responsible for the murders, he had been complicit.
According to The Guardian, Meier-Goring said that the concentration camp Stutthof and the mass murder that took place only happened because people like Dey did nothing.
Dey and the remaining survivors of the concentration camp are above 90 years old, which means that Dey's trial is the last of its kind. Throughout the whole court hearing, Dey listened to the horrific stories of the survivors. Three dozen co-plaintiffs were present in court.
In his final statement to the court, Dey apologized to all of the survivors who went through "the hellish madness" of the camp. He also apologized to the relatives of the survivors and victims, as well as their descendants.
The BBC added that Dey had been shaken by the accounts of the witnesses but said that he had been unaware of the extent of the atrocities that happened inside.
Stutthof camp
The Stutthof camp was established near Gdanks, Poland. It was designated as a concentration camp in 1942. More than 65,000 people died at the Nazi camp before it was liberated by the Soviet forces on May 9, 1945.
Stutthof was the first German concentration camp that was built outside German borders in World War II. It operated from September 2, 1939, to May 9, 1945. The people in the camp died from starvation, murder, extreme labor conditions, epidemics, brutal and forced evacuations, and lack of medical care.
The conditions in the camp were harsh as thousands of prisoners eventually succumbed to disease and starvation. A typhus epidemic swept the camp in the winter of 1942 and 1944. Those who were too sick or weak to work were gassed in the small gas chamber of the camp.
Around 28,000 of those who died in the Stutthof camp were Jews. Around 110,000 people were deported to the Stutthof camp and around 24,600 were transferred from Stutthof to other locations.
