Bruno Dey, then 17 years old, was tried for complicity in the thousands of murders committed in Stutthof, Poland between 1944 and 1945. Hamburg Court
Bruno Dey, then 17 years old, was on trial for complicity in the thousands of murders committed in Stutthof, Poland between 1944 and 1945.
A Hamburg court on Thursday sentenced a 93-year-old former Nazi camp guard to two years of probation for complicity in thousands of murders committed in Stutthof, Poland, between 1944 and 1945.
The accused Bruno Dey, 17 years old at the time of the facts, “was found guilty of complicity in 5,232 cases of murder and attempted murder,” court president Anne Meier-Göring said at the end of the trial, possibly one of the last, involving crimes committed under The Third Reich.
To put it bluntly, the 90-year-old, who appears at all debates in a wheelchair and accompanied by his family, supported the Nazi extermination machine. On Monday, the defendant apologized to “those who have been through this hell of madness,” saying that during the nine-month trial and forty stories, he had truly learned the “full extent of the cruelty” of the crimes committed in Stutthof.
summer offer: Take advantage of a special offer for 2 months for €1 I want to subscribe
Rejection of guilt
In total, about 65,000 people, mostly Jews from the Baltic countries and Poland, were dead, butchered with a bullet in the back of the head, gassed with Zyklon B, and hanged. Or they succumbed to the cold, epidemics and forced labor. This camp, the first established outside Germany in 1939, was gradually integrated into the system of extermination of Jews.
READ ALSO >> Germany: Interior Ministry bans small group of Adolf Hitler nostalgics
The accused, placed on one of the towers, a lookout, had the duty to prevent rebellion or escape. Does that make him guilty? He claimed not. It never “hurt anyone directly”. He had never “volunteered to enter the SS or serve in a death camp,” but had no choice but to accept his assignment, he said.
The last trial of its kind?
In the face of such crimes, “it is not enough to look away and wait for it to stop,” replied Attorney General Lars Mahnke in his indictment. So he could ask to return to the army. This, however, would probably mean that he would be sent to the Eastern Front. Briefly a prisoner of war after 1945, Bruno Dey was unconcerned about the results. He created his life in Hamburg, was a baker, truck driver and janitor, and started a family.
Seventy-five years after the end of World War II, this trial could be the last of its kind due to the advanced age of the protagonists. Last week, the district court in Wuppertal announced an indictment against another former guard of Stutthof, a 95-year-old, also for complicity in the murders. Holding the trial is far from assured.
Updated date: July 23, 2020, 2:58 p.m
Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: newstars.edu.vn