A 92-year-old former SS guard charged with helping murder 5,230 prisoners at a Nazi death camp in World War II will go on trial in October, prosecutors said on Thursday.
Bruno Dey, whose full name will not be released under German rules for court cases, is charged as an accessory to murders committed at the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland from August 1944 to April 1945.
Dey was a guard at the camp and helped prevent prisoners, many of whom were Jews, from escaping, Hamburg prosecutors said in April when they charged him. They added that Dey was “a cog in the murder machine who was aware of the circumstances, of having been able to contribute to carrying out the orders to kill.”
The former SS guard made a partial confession, said a spokeswoman for the Hamburg prosecutors.
The daily Die Welt reported that Dey acknowledged his presence at the camp, said he knew people were pushed into gas chambers and saw bodies being burned in the crematorium. He argued, though, that he is not guilty of a crime.
“What use would it have been if I had left; they would have found someone else?” Die Welt newspaper quoted him saying.
About 65,000 people were murdered or died at Stutthof, according to the museum’s website.
Day was a teen at the time of the crimes, so he will be tried in a youth court, which has different sentencing rules. If found guilty, he could still face time in prison.
