A 93-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard was convicted in Germany on Thursday of being a fixture in the murder of more than 5,200 prisoners, but came out with a two-year suspended prison sentence.
Bruno Dey, whose trial began in October, was found guilty in a Hamburg court of 5,232 murder accessory charges, the German news agency dpa reported, or one charge for each victim believed to have been killed during his stay at the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944 and 1945.
Dey, whose case was heard in juvenile court because he was 17 and 18 at the time, was also found guilty of an accessory for attempted murder. Prosecutors sought a three-year sentence for Dey, whose attorneys argued that he was acquitted.
Dey had previously confessed that he was a guard on the field, but insisted that he had no choice during his trial, which included more than 40 co-plaintiffs from France, Israel, Poland and the United States, reports CNN.
Dey, according to his 2019 indictment, supported the “insidious and cruel murder” at the Stutthof concentration camp in what was then occupied Poland.
In a court statement earlier this week, Dey, in a wheelchair, said he was “shaken” by witness accounts and apologized to “those who went through the hell of this madness,” reports the BBC. .
But he also claimed that he was unaware of the “extent of the atrocities” until his trial, despite acknowledging that he knew of gas chambers and seeing “emaciated figures” and “people who suffered” in the death camp, reports the BBC.
Prosecutors disputed that claim, saying Dey was aware of the mass killings and actively prevented prisoners from escaping.
“When you are part of the mass murder machine, it is not enough to look the other way,” said prosecutor Lars Mahnke.
More than 65,000 people are believed to have died at Stutthof, where guards began using gas chambers in June 1944.
Dey’s sentence, meanwhile, was criticized as too light by the chief Nazi hunter in the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem.
“We are very pleased that he was convicted but upset by the sentence, which is in some ways an insult to survivors,” Efraim Zuroff told the Associated Press. “There has to be some element of punishment.”
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