Holocaust trial: Former Stutthof guard to go on trial in Germany

Stutthof has been preserved as a museum

A 92-year-old man will go on trial in Germany in October for crimes of complicity in mass murder at a Nazi death camp during World War Two.

Bruno Dey is accused of contributing to the killings of 5,230 prisoners between 1944 and 1945 in the Stutthof camp in what is now northern Poland.

Mr Dey admitted knowledge of atrocities being carried out at the camp, the Die Welt newspaper reports.

But the former guard said he could not escape for fear of being killed.

Located near the city of Danzig (now Gdansk), Stutthof was originally an internment camp before being officially designated a concentration camp in 1942.

From June 1944, prisoners were murdered in a gas chamber, and more than 65,000 died before Stutthof was liberated by the Soviet Army on 9 May 1945.

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The trial is likely to be one of the last against a former Nazi guard.

The hearings will be restricted to two-hour sessions of no more than twice a week, because of Mr Dey's ill health.

Dr Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which campaigns for the rights of Holocaust survivors, welcomed the decision to bring Mr Dey to trial.

"The passage of time in no way diminishes the criminal responsibility of those guilty of aiding and abetting the implementation of the Final Solution," he said.

"The Wiesenthal Center has assisted in the recent cases of two Stutthof guards by locating more than 20 survivors of the camp, most of whom are currently residing in Israel."