A 92-year-old Ex-SS guard has been charged with 5,230 counts of accessory to murder after working at the Stutthof concentration “death” camp during World War II is going to trial, German prosecutors announced on Thursday.
The Voice of America reports that the suspect, identified as Bruno Dey, of Hamburg, is accused of a playing a part in the “malicious and cruel” act of killing numerous Jewish people between August 1944 and April 1945. Prosecutors alleged the suspect was a “a little wheel in the machinery of murder.”
Since he was 17 when he worked at Stutthof, he’ll be tried as a juvenile, according to the The Times of Israel. When questioned by prosecutors, the man reportedly acknowledged he worked at the camp, but claimed he was “never a Nazi” and ended up at the Death’s Head Unit only because he had a heart condition.
Germany Charges Former SS Guard With 5,230 Counts of Accessory to Murder https://t.co/DGPSEuEEjq
— The Voice of America (@VOANews) April 18, 2019
Dey admitted he had watchtower guard duties at the camp, which included witnessing victims being pushed into a gas chamber. He also acknowledged that seeing “emaciated figures, people who had suffered.”
When asked why he failed to put in a transfer when he realized innocent people were being killed, Dey insinuated it wouldn’t have done any good.
“What good would it have done for me to leave? They’d just have found somebody else.”
The suspect said he felt bad for the Jewish victims, despite his lack of action to help them, according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency.
“I felt bad for the people there. I didn’t know why they were there. I knew that they were Jews who had committed no crime.”
Dey’s trial will likely be one of the Nazi trials, due to the advanced age and ill health of most of the former guards.
[Feature Photo via AP]
