A German court convicted a 93-year-old former concentration-camp guard on Thursday on 5,232 counts of accessory to murder.
Bruno Dey, who served as a guard at the Stuthoff concentration camp during the final months of World War II, was given a two-year suspended sentence by the Hamburg state court according to the dpa news agency. The 5,232 figure corresponds to the number of people believed to have been killed at the camp during Dey’s time there.
Dey was 17 in 1944 when he began his service at Stutthof, near the city of Gdansk. His trial took place in juvenile court because of his age at the time the crime was committed.
“How could you just get used to the horror?” asked presiding judge Anne Meier-Goering while she read out the sentence.
Thirty-five survivors of the camp were among the co-plaintiffs represented at the trial, the report said, adding that their lawyers called for admitting guilt but did not push for a harsh sentence. Dey confessed at the start of the trial last year for working at Stutthof, but claimed he did not work there willingly.
Six of the co-plaintiffs spoke to the court via video, offering testimony with regard to the daily abuse, beatings and murders at the camp, as well as the deaths by hunger and typhus.
Germany’s Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes prosecutors are working on 14 other cases related to crimes at death camps during World War II, dpa noted.