Bruno D, former Nazi SS concentration camp guard, convicted in Germany


The 93-year-old man, identified as Bruno D, was charged with 5,230 accessory murder charges during his time as an SS guard at the Stutthof concentration camp from 1944 to 1945.

He was found guilty by the Hamburg juvenile court for aiding and abetting the murder of at least 5,232 people. He faced a juvenile court because he was 17 years old when he served at Stutthof.

The defendant had previously admitted that he was a guard at the camp, but told the court at the beginning of his trial that he had no other option at the time.

More than 40 co-plaintiffs from France, Israel, Poland and the United States testified against the former SS guard during the trial, which began in October.

Concluding just over 75 years after World War II ended in Europe, it will be one of the last tests of a former Nazi.

An estimated 65,000 people were killed during the Holocaust in the Stutthof concentration camp near the Polish city now called Gdansk.

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Bruno D. caught the attention of prosecutors during the historic trial of former SS guard Sobibor John Demjanjuk. He was charged in April 2019 and lives with his family in Hamburg. According to his 2019 indictment, Bruno D. knowingly supported the “insidious and cruel murder” at the Stutthof concentration camp.

Prisoners at Stutthof were shot in the neck, poisoned with Zyklon B gas, and denied food and medicine, according to court documents.

This occurs after a 95-year-old man, accused of being a guard in the same field as Bruno D, was charged on July 14 with war crimes during the Holocaust, the district court of Wuppertal, Germany announced last week. .

German prosecutors are investigating 14 other cases related to the Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Stutthof concentration camps, according to the Nazi Central Crime Investigation Office.

First established by the Nazis in 1939, Stutthof went on to house a total of 115,000 prisoners, more than half of whom died there. Around 22,000 were transferred from Stutthof to other Nazi camps.

Approximately 6 million Jews are believed to have died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Roma and people with mental or physical disabilities also died.

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