Former Nazi guard, 93, to stand trial in Germany over thousands of camp murders

A 93-year-old former guard at a Nazi concentration camp will go on trial in Germany on Thursday on the charge of being an accessory to thousands of murders.

The man, known as “Bruno D,” will face a Hamburg court over the deaths of 5,230 people after he joined the SS as a guard between August 1944 and April 1945.

According to the indictment, the defendant knowingly supported the “insidious and cruel killing” at Stutthof concentration camp, in what is now modern-day Poland.

Prisoners in Stutthof were killed by being shot in the back of the neck, poisoned with Zyklon B gas, and denied food and medicine, court documents allege. The defendant could be considered complicit in the crimes because he prevented the escape, revolt and rescue of the prisoners, a spokesperson for Hamburg’s district court told CNN.

Despite his advanced age, the defendant is being tried in a youth court because he was 17 years old when he joined the SS as a guard at the camp, according to a press release from Hamburg’s district court.

Bruno D will only stand trial for two hours a day because of his health, according to court documents.

Stutthof was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp located 22 miles east of Danzig — now the Polish city of Gdańsk.

First established by the Nazis in 1939, Stutthof went on to house a total of 115,000 prisoners, more than half of whom — some 65,000 — died there. Around 22,000 went on to be transferred from Stutthof to other Nazi camps.

It is believed that approximately six million Jewish people died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Also killed were hundreds of thousands of Roma people and people with mental or physical disabilities.

This story has been updated to reflect that the Stutthof concentration camp is located in what is now modern-day Poland.