A 93-year old German man has been found guilty of helping to murder 5232 mostly Jewish prisoners at a Nazi concentration camp in World War II.
A former SS tower guard identified as Bruno Dey was handed a suspended sentence of two years for being involved in killings between August 1944 and April 1945.
As he was only 17 or 18 at the time of the crimes, he was subject to youth sentencing guidelines.
In one of the last cases against Nazi-era crimes, Hamburg court found Dey was an accessory to 5232 murders at the Sobibor extermination camp in German-occupied Poland.
About 5000 prisoners whom he guarded had died in a typhus epidemic in the camp from 1942-1944.
Another 200 people were died in a gas chamber and 30 were executed with a device specially built for killing with a shot in the back of the head.
Dey said he had witnessed “emaciated figures, people who had suffered” at the Stutthof gas chambers.
He acknowledged his presence at Stutthof, where about 65,000 people, including many Jews, were murdered or died.
But he said his presence did not amount to guilt.
Dey’s lawyers claimed he was a relatively unimportant figure in the camp. Prosecutors disagreed, saying he was aware of the atrocities and actively prevented the escape of many prisoners.
They had called for a three-year prison sentence.
Read the article in The New Daily.