Should Germany Try Nazi Helpers?

In the summer of 2020 a court in Hamburg found Bruno Dey, a ninety-three-year-old former member of the SS Totenkopfsturmbann (Death’s Head Battalion) and a guard at Stutthof concentration camp, near Gdańsk, from August 1944 to April 1945, guilty on 5,232 counts of being an accessory to murder. The testimonies of survivors of the camp gave a glimpse into hell. It was normal to see the corpses of those who had died of hunger, exhaustion, and violence lying in the open, Marek Dunin-Wąsowicz told the court. Another witness, Abraham Koryski, spoke of the sadistic “shows” that the SS staged in front of the prisoners; in one such spectacle, a son was forced to beat his father to death. Judy Meisel recounted how she and her mother stood naked in a line leading to the gas chamber: “When I saw the chance to run back to the barracks, my mother urged me to run. I had to leave her behind.” It was the last time she saw her. Dey, who was seventeen when he joined the SS and became a guard at Stutthof, denied the charges against him. He gave a horrific account of his time there, recalling inmates being led to the gas chamber, their screams inside, their desperate banging on its door. Dey was given a two-year suspended sentence.