Ex-Nazi concentration camp guard goes on trial

A former Nazi concentration camp guard went on trial Thursday in the German city of Hamburg for accessory to murder.

In what could be one of the last instances of a Nazi guard being brought to trial, Bruno Dey, 93, is accused of accessory in the murders of 5,230 prisoners between 1944 and 1945 in the Stutthof [Sztutowo] camp, in what is now Poland.

The victims include 5,000 prisoners who died during a typhus epidemic in the camp due to the extremely poor conditions and lack of food and water, as well as 200 people who were gassed with Zyklon B and 30 individuals executed with a Genickschussanlage, a device designed for executions where victims were shot in the back of the neck.

Dey has admitted that he served at the camp and had knowledge of what took place, but has denied any complicity in the deaths of inmates.

Dey was 17 years old when he joined the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann [Death’s Head Battalion] and guarded the watchtowers of the camp. The Death’s Head Units and the Nazi SS organization are infamous for their use of the human skull as a cap badge.

Since he was only 17 at the time of the crimes, Dey will be tried in a juvenile court. He is accused of forcefully keeping people as prisoners and involvement in the suppression of prisoner revolts.

Markus Horstmann, a lawyer representing one of the co-plaintiffs, told The Guardian that, for the victims, “This is not a matter of revenge. A trial like this is for them more about seeing what happened to them declared an injustice in a German court, and about telling their story so it doesn’t get forgotten.”

Stutthof, opened in September 1939, was the first Nazi concentration camp set up outside German borders in World War II. It was also the last camp liberated by the Allies on May 9, 1945. It is estimated that between 63,000 and 65,000 prisoners at the concentration camp died due to the extreme living conditions.