A former concentration camp guard, now 93, was convicted on thousands of charges of being an accessory to murder by a court in Germany on Thursday.
The man, identified as Bruno D, was charged with 5,230 murder accessory charges during his time as an SS guard at the Strutthof concentration camp from 1944 to 1945, CNN reported. They gave him a two-year suspended prison sentence.
He reportedly faced a juvenile court because he was 17 years old when he served in Stutthof.
More than 40 co-plaintiffs – allegedly people from France, Israel, Poland and the United States – testified against the former SS guard during his trial, which began in October.
More than 60,000 people died in the camp, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In a final statement to court earlier this week, the former SS guard apologized for the role he played and said: “It should never be repeated.”
“Today, I want to apologize to all the people who went through this hellish madness,” said Bruno D, according to Time.
He previously admitted to being a guard at the camp, but told the court at the start of the trial that he had no other choice at the time, according to CNN.
Ben Cohen, whose grandmother Judy Meisel was imprisoned in Stutthof and is a co-plaintiff at the trial, called the verdict “symbolic justice” for the victims. Meisel’s mother, Mina Beker, was killed in the field.
“On behalf of my grandmother and our family, this verdict sends a powerful message that a guard at any camp cannot deny responsibility for what happened,” Cohen said in a statement to CNN.
“Unfortunately, most of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were never prosecuted, so we are left with something that feels like symbolic justice today, rather than true justice,” he added.
The case is likely not the last against older men accused of serving as Nazi guards. A German district court reportedly announced last week that a 95-year-old man accused of being a guard in the same camp was charged on July 14 with war crimes during the Holocaust.
German prosecutors are also investigating 14 other cases related to the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Stutthof concentration camps, CNN reported, citing the Central Office for Nazi Crime Investigation.
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