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| Ex-Nazi guard Bruno Dey, aged 93, convicted of 5,232 murders, gets 2-year suspended prison sentence |
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Berlin, Germany — Bruno Dey, who became a guard at one of Adolf Hitler's Nazi death camps when he was just 17, has been convicted of being an accessory to more than 5,000 murders and given a suspended prison sentence in Germany. Given his health condition now at the age of 93, he was given a two-year suspended sentence.
Between August 1944 and April 1945, Dey served as a guard in the "Death's Head" unit of the SS at the Stutthof concentration camp, 24 miles east of the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Gdańsk.
On Thursday, a court in Hamburg, Germany found him guilty of 5,232 counts of accessory to murder - the number of victims believed to have been killed at Stutthof during his time there between 1944 and 1945. He was also convicted on one count of accessory to attempted murder.
The Nazi's Stutthof concentration camp in Poland is seen in a 1941 file photo provided by the Stutthof Museum in Sztutowo, Poland.
Ex-Nazi guard Bruno Dey, aged 93, convicted of 5,232 murders, gets 2-year suspended prison sentence
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| Ex-Nazi guard Bruno Dey, aged 93, convicted of 5,232 murders, gets 2-year suspended prison sentence |
STUTTHOF MUSEUM
Dey never denied being a guard at the camp, but consistently said in court that he considered himself innocent, having not taken part directly in any murders and claiming he was unaware of the atrocities. On Monday he asked the victims for forgiveness, however, saying they had gone through the "hell of madness."
Dey said Monday that it was only through the trial that he had become aware of the full extent of the cruelty and suffering at the camp. "Such a thing must never happen again," he said in his apology to the victims.
His defense attorney had argued that membership in the SS alone couldn't make Dey an accessory to the murders, and that he had not recognized his service at the time as participation in Nazi crimes.
The 5,232 victims killed during Dey's service include about 5,000 who died of typhoid in the horrifically unhygienic conditions at the camp, but Dey was also implicated in the executions of 200 people who were gassed with Zyklon B, and 30 more who were shot in the neck.
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