For the tenth time, Bruno D. is being wheelchair-pushed into room 300 of the Hamburg district court. This Monday, the 93-year-old's turn again with the survey; not a victim, not a Holocaust survivor, but he - the former SS security guard in the Stutthof concentration camp. There, near Gdansk, he stood on one of the towers from August 1944 to April 1945. He is therefore charged with helping to kill thousands of people.
The court will complete his questioning on that day, and only then will the prosecutor and co-plaintiff's representative ask the defendant's questions. The presiding judge begins with a statement: Command orders confirm that Christmas was also celebrated in the camp. How did the so-called July celebrations take place in the concentration camp?
Bruno D. says that he did not take part in any celebrations, nor could he remember that they, the guards, were allowed to do so. New Year's Eve parties, trips home - none of this had happened. He had only been to the cinema once. "Only once?" Asks the judge. This does not seem to her much, since there was "a real entertainment program" in the concentration camp for the guards.
He can only remember one visit to the cinema, says Bruno D. After all, there was no order to go out. "I've always segregated myself anyway."
How did he find it to wear an SS uniform?
Commitment. A strategy. Bruno D. will not deviate from this in the following two hours, as on earlier days of the trial: he was a security guard in a concentration camp in which the Nazis murdered 65,000 people and imprisoned more than 100,000 Jews and political opponents under inhumane conditions - but from the atrocities and D. wants no idea of the mass destruction.
Judge Anne Meier-Göring asks him about the difference between ethnic Germans and Imperial Germans that the National Socialists made at the time; after the Ukrainians who were supposed to support the guards in the concentration camp; after that, as he found it, to wear an SS uniform.
Bruno D. draws on his well-founded memory and provides information. However, he has no memory of the arrival of more than 50,000 prisoners who were deported to the camp while he was on guard. "I didn't notice it," says the 93-year-old.
newspix / imago images
Former concentration camp at Stutthof
The chairman struggles for objectivity and lists three options why Bruno D. does not want to say anything about the dimension of crime: "Either you are lying to us or you have suppressed all the terrible pictures in your head or you do not want to tell us anything about it because You might have had to use your weapon. " Bruno D. replies that none of this is true. "I just don't know."
Meier-Göring doesn't give up. What about the mountain of thousands of shoes of all the dead who lost their lives in the concentration camp? What about the prisoners who had to endure the cold for hours, even at night? What about the beatings and fatal attacks on prisoners during the appeals? What about the security guards from Auschwitz or other camps who came to Stutthof for support? According to the command of the commandant on October 3, 1944, an escort team was assigned to the 1st company of the Totenkopfsturmbann, the company to which Bruno D. belonged.
Bruno D. supposedly saw nothing, heard nothing, heard nothing - this is how his statements can be summarized. He felt sorry for him anyway. Especially with the Jews, who were only held in the camp because they were Jews. He knew that they were innocent. He says all of this in court. An admission with which he is not doing himself a favor. There is an exchange of blows.
He could have resisted, says the judge
The judge now wants to know when he understood that a crime against humanity had occurred before his eyes. "Pretty quickly," replies Bruno D. Did he think about not participating? "I thought so. But what should I have done?" Asks Bruno D. He could not have refused the order without putting his life in danger. The judge says: He could have resisted a criminal order. "I didn't think about it as a criminal order," says Bruno D.
The judge doesn't stop:
- Did he even think of a way to escape? "I was considering the option of disappearing. But where to?"
- Back then, did he ask himself the question of not being able to reconcile all of this with his conscience? "Yes, but who should I have said it to?"
- Why didn't he go to his superiors like other guards? "I don't know how they did it."
A "criminal order" was for him: "You have to shoot him!" Says Bruno D. And he would never have done that. The judge asks: "But stand on a watchtower and prevent the prisoners from running away, was that okay?" Bruno D. looks outraged: "It was definitely not okay."
It is a tough struggle and the hopelessness for consensus is obvious. Bruno D. stuck with it: if he had allowed himself to be transferred from the watchtower, he would have refused to do so, his post would have been filled by another person and no human life could have been saved.
The judge emphasized: Many security guards would have declared that they had put themselves in danger if they had refused. In fact, not a single security guard who resisted was killed.
Almost at the end Meier-Göring asks the question that hangs over the whole procedure: "Mr. D., you say you have done nothing. You are not to blame?"
Bruno D. adjusts his headphones. "I'm not guilty. I didn't directly harm anyone."
Also read the report on a historic decision by the Federal Court of Justice: Whoever guarded Auschwitz is guilty