Stutthof-process: Early learned to obey

In the trial against the former SS-Wachmann Bruno D., in Hamburg, is one of the Central questions, what must he have seen from his watchtower, and knew of the crimes in the German concentration camp Stutthof near Danzig. And if he has realized that he has contributed his service to the wrong. In 1944, at the age of 17, took Bruno D. his service in the warehouse, with 18 years of age and the near end of the war, he left it. Today, he is 93 years old.

Matthias Wyssuwa

Political correspondent for the North of Germany and Scandinavia with headquarters in Hamburg.

The Prosecutor's office accuses Bruno D. an accessory to murder in at least 5230 cases. He should be supported according to the indictment, as a security guard, the "insidious and cruel killing, in particular, Jewish prisoners". The process is in front of the youth chamber met to negotiate, on Friday, an expert in adolescent psychiatry from said again, Stefanos Hotamanidis. Because, according to the youth criminal law youth, and that was Bruno D. a part of the time of the offence, is criminally responsible only if he is at the time of the act, "according to his moral and spiritual development is not Mature enough, the injustice of the fact, to view and to act according to this insight."

Hotamanidis has spoken several times with the defendant, and a report created, which he has now presented in two session days. Bruno D. had denied in the process never to be an SS guard, he has also reported to have a lot of dead bodies seen. The people had done to him, sorry.

The image of a loner

Just a fault in himself, he has denied because he had nobody any harm and only carried out orders. He never took a shot – and, allegedly, he had also shot himself in an escape attempt never to a people. However, while Bruno D. was partially to report on little things that happened to him at the time, precisely, had he, with a view to the crimes in the camp again and again, gaps in memory.

The expert draws the image of a loner, the conflict is gone out of the way and in the family had learned to obey. So he has kept it in the army. He could remember no case where Bruno D. not have done what would have said to his parents, he says.