Exguard at Nazi camp convicted of being accessory

BERLIN — A German court on Thursday convicted a 93yearold former SS private of being an accessory to murder at the Stutthof concentration camp, where he served as a guard in the final months of World War II. He was given a twoyear suspended sentence.

Bruno Dey was convicted of 5,232 counts of accessory to murder by the Hamburg state court, news agency DPA reported. That is equal to the number of people believed to have been killed at Stutthof during his service there in 1944 and 1945. He also was convicted of one count of accessory to attempted murder.

“How could you get used to the horror?” presiding judge Anne MeierGoering asked as she announced the verdict.

Because he was only 17, and later 18, at the time of his alleged crimes, Dey’s case was heard in juvenile court. Prosecutors had called for a threeyear sentence, while the defense sought acquittal.

The trial opened in October.

Because of Dey’s age, court sessions were limited to two, twohour sessions a week.

In a closing statement earlier this week, the wheelchairbound German retiree apologized for his role in the Nazis’ machinery of destruction, saying “it must never be repeated.”

For at least two decades, every trial of a former Nazi has been dubbed “likely Germany’s last.” But just last week, another exguard at Stutthof was charged at age 95. A special prosecutors’ office that investigates Naziera crimes has more than a dozen ongoing investigations.

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 Germanoccupied Poland. Demjanjuk, who steadfastly denied the allegations, died before his appeal could be heard.

German courts had previously required prosecutors to justify charges by presenting evidence of a former guard’s participation in a specific killing, often next to impossible 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 whose only purpose was murder was enough for an accessory conviction.