JULY 20, 2020 timesofisrael.com
A former nazi on trial in Germany apologizes to the victims of the Holocaust

“Today I would like to apologize to those who have gone through this hell of madness, and with their loved ones. “For his last speech at his trial at Hamburg in Germany, Bruno Dey, 93-year-old, apologized on Monday to victims of the Holocaust. “Such a thing shall never happen again “, said the former guard of nazi camp. The verdict is expected Thursday.

The statements of the witnesses have allowed him to capture “the full extent of the cruelty” of the crimes at the camp of Stutthof in the north of Poland, stressed in his nineties German. “I want to reaffirm that I never volunteered to serve in the SS or […] or in a concentration camp “, he said. And to continue : if he had had the opportunity, he would not be gone.

Baker retired, the accused person in a wheelchair flowed peaceful days until the justice of the intimate, to explain his activities during the Holocaust. Bruno Dey appear from October 2019 before the German courts. He is accused of complicity in thousands of murders – 5230 -when he was a guard, between August 1944 and April 1945, in the camp of Stutthof. Located 40 km from Gdansk, it was the first nazi camp built outside of Germany, guarded by the SS and the auxiliary ukrainians. According to the public prosecutor, it ” has supported the murder horrible, in particular, of jewish inmates “.

His lawyer Stefan Waterkamp has called for this Monday, a non-place, or at worst a suspended prison sentence according to the law for minors on the basis of which it is judged. He was 17 years old at the time of the facts. It is necessary to take into account the fact that “to serve in a concentration camp there was at that time not regarded as a crime,” he added.

A German court late

About 65,000 people died at Stutthof (Sztutowo in Polish), according to the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, among the 115,000 prisoners passed through this camp. The victims are mostly women, jewish, baltic states and Poland, deported from 1944.

In recent years, Germany has tried and convicted several former SS for complicity in the murder. These cases illustrate the increased severity, but late, of his justice, is frequently criticized for its slight treatment of the crimes of the Third Reich. The prosecutor’s offices and courts in germany have expanded to the guards of the camps the charge of complicity in the murder. In the past, only the persons who occupied high positions in the nazi hierarchy, or directly involved in a homicide, had been accused of complicity.

The most iconic has been the proceedings against John Demjanjuk. Former guard in the extermination camp of Sobibor, he was sentenced in 2011 a penalty of five years in prison. It was in first place on the list of nazi war criminals established by the Centre Wiesenthal, an international organization of jewish ” combat anti-semitism, holocaust denial, extremism, and the activities of neo-nazi “. He died in 2012, before his appeal trial.

timesofisrael.com