A 93-year-old former Nazi SS concentration camp guard has been found guilty of complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 prisoners.
Bruno Dey was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence by a court in the German city of Hamburg.
Dey had manned a tower at the Stutthof Camp in what was then occupied Poland.
It is expected to be one of the last Nazi-era trials, as both survivors and perpetrators are now very old, and in some cases their memories are failing.
Dey was tried in a juvenile court because he was 17 at the time the atrocities were carried out, between August 1944 and April 1945, according to the indictment.
Apology for 'the hell of this madness'
During the nine-month trial, Dey listened to witness statements but maintained he had been forced into his role as a guard at the camp and had not been involved in the killings.
In his last statement to the court, he said he had been "shaken" by the witness accounts and apologised to "those who went through the hell of this madness". However, he added that he had not been aware of the "extent of the atrocities" until the trial.
Sentencing Dey, the judge acknowledged his willingness to take part in the trial but said he had refused to acknowledge his own complicity in what was going on. "You saw yourself as an observer," the judge said.
Ex-SS guard tells trial 'I want to forget'
The trial in January heard from a historian who testified that Dey had been sent to the camp initially as a Wehrmacht soldier and had not joined the SS until September 1944. So, it was argued, he could have asked for a transfer to another unit before becoming part of the SS mass murder machine.
Although Dey acknowledged knowing of the Stutthof gas chambers and admitted seeing "emaciated figures, people who had suffered", his defence team argued that he was a relatively unimportant figure in the camp and was not directly involved in the 5,230 deaths.
But prosecutors argued he had known what was happening, had had contact with the prisoners and had actively prevented their escape.
"When you are a part of mass-murder machinery, it is not enough to look away," prosecutor Lars Mahnke said in his closing arguments.
Stutthof, located near modern-day Gdansk, was officially designated a concentration camp in 1942. It was the first such camp built outside German borders in the war and the last to be liberated, by the Soviet army on 9 May 1945.
Guards began using gas chambers there in June 1944. More than 65,000 people are thought to have died in the camp, from illness and malnutrition as well as from the gas chambers and other executions.
Dey's was one of several war crimes investigations that were considered by the German authorities after a landmark 2011 ruling against former Sobibor camp guard John Demjanjuk. He was given a jail term as an accessory to mass murder but died pending an appeal.
Previously, courts had required evidence of former SS guards' direct involvement in atrocities.
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LawyerLady
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
So, I am really torn about this one. He was 17 when sent to this camp as a guard, and he was tried as a juvenile.
In studying everything, the German youth were torn from their homes and sent to Youth Camps to be indoctrinated and brain washed into the Nazi Party at a very young age. They had no choice.
This man was not directly involved in killing and as a 17 year old soldier, would have had absolutely no power. Being seen as a sympathizer could have gotten him killed and had an effect on his family's safety.
IKWTS - what do you think?
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LawyerLady
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
We should never forget, but at some point, we have to move on.
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A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
I think he was powerless during the time as a guard. However, I don't believe he was forth coming with his knowledge of what was occurring during the time. "he added that he had not been aware of the "extent of the atrocities" until the trial." That statement is BS. How could he not know of the atrocities until the trial? Most of the world knew in the early 1940's about the horror stories coming from the camps.
At this point in his life, the 2 year suspended sentence is probably best; his having to listen to victim stories will haunt him for his remaining days.
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Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug.
His sentence was suspended so hopefully he won't do any time. At his age, I think he should be spared prison.
Because it was only recently that they changed the rules over who could be tried to make it easier to charge pretty much any worker at a concentration camp as an accessory.
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LawyerLady
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
I think he was powerless during the time as a guard. However, I don't believe he was forth coming with his knowledge of what was occurring during the time. "he added that he had not been aware of the "extent of the atrocities" until the trial." That statement is BS. How could he not know of the atrocities until the trial? Most of the world knew in the early 1940's about the horror stories coming from the camps.
At this point in his life, the 2 year suspended sentence is probably best; his having to listen to victim stories will haunt him for his remaining days.
I think it's different to read it in a history book, or article than it is to listen to first hand accounts from victims. I can tell you that listening to Elie Wiesel tell us about his experiences in person had much more of an impact than anything we could read.
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LawyerLady
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
His sentence was suspended so hopefully he won't do any time. At his age, I think he should be spared prison.
Because it was only recently that they changed the rules over who could be tried to make it easier to charge pretty much any worker at a concentration camp as an accessory.
Thanks. I have a problem with retroactively applying new "rules."
His sentence was suspended so hopefully he won't do any time. At his age, I think he should be spared prison.
Because it was only recently that they changed the rules over who could be tried to make it easier to charge pretty much any worker at a concentration camp as an accessory.
Thanks. I have a problem with retroactively applying new "rules."
This is the reasoning -
That's due in part to a precedent established in 2011 with the conviction of former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk as an accessory to murder on allegations that he served as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in German-occupied Poland. Demjanjuk, who steadfastly denied the allegations, died before his appeal could be heard.
Before Demjanjuk's case, German courts had required prosecutors to justify charges by presenting evidence of a former guard's participation in a specific killing, a legal standard that was often next to impossible to meet given the circumstances of the crimes committed at Nazi death camps.
However, prosecutors successfully argued during Demjanjuk's trial in Munich that guarding a camp where the only purpose was murder was enough for an accessory conviction.
Prosecutors argued that as a Stutthof guard from August 1944 to April 1945, Dey – although "no ardent worshipper of Nazi ideology'' – aided all the killings that took place there during that period as a "small wheel in the machinery of murder."
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LawyerLady
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
I think he was powerless during the time as a guard. However, I don't believe he was forth coming with his knowledge of what was occurring during the time. "he added that he had not been aware of the "extent of the atrocities" until the trial." That statement is BS. How could he not know of the atrocities until the trial? Most of the world knew in the early 1940's about the horror stories coming from the camps.
At this point in his life, the 2 year suspended sentence is probably best; his having to listen to victim stories will haunt him for his remaining days.
I think it's different to read it in a history book, or article than it is to listen to first hand accounts from victims. I can tell you that listening to Elie Wiesel tell us about his experiences in person had much more of an impact than anything we could read.
The story of my friends grandmother sneaking out of Italy. Whoa. She made it, though.
I think he was powerless during the time as a guard. However, I don't believe he was forth coming with his knowledge of what was occurring during the time. "he added that he had not been aware of the "extent of the atrocities" until the trial." That statement is BS. How could he not know of the atrocities until the trial? Most of the world knew in the early 1940's about the horror stories coming from the camps.
At this point in his life, the 2 year suspended sentence is probably best; his having to listen to victim stories will haunt him for his remaining days.
I think it's different to read it in a history book, or article than it is to listen to first hand accounts from victims. I can tell you that listening to Elie Wiesel tell us about his experiences in person had much more of an impact than anything we could read.
The story of my friends grandmother sneaking out of Italy. Whoa. She made it, though.
And that is why I read only true accounts of actual victims. Sometimes the history books have watered down versions. Elie Wisel was a wonderful speaker and I had the privelage of hearing him speak in person. Hearing it from the mouth of a victim with the emotion in their voice and how their eyes sometimes peer upwards as if to just speak the words without making them go back to that dark place is so compelling.
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Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug.
