Old age, last card of the Nazis to escape the prison

More than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, the German justice system continues to hunt down former Nazis. This Thursday opens in Hamburg the trial of Bruno Dey, a former SS guardian of the Stutthof concentration camp, accused of contributing to the killings of 5230 Jewish prisoners between August 1944 and April 1945.

Aged 17 at the time, Bruno Dey was required "to prevent the escape, revolt or release of prisoners" sentenced to be exterminated with a bullet in the neck or Zyklon B, according to the terms of the charge reported by the newspaper Die Welt. In this camp where 65,000 people were killed, he was a "cogwheel of the deadly machinery knowingly," said the prosecution during his indictment last April.

Judge "until the last breath"

Seven decades later, the 92-year-old has to answer for the actions of which he is accused.

The need for justice, the Germans "have really realized since the trial of Auschwitz (1947, in Poland) They realized the immensity of the crime and the imperative to judge the Nazis until the last breath" , exhibits at BFMTV.com Serge Klarsfeld.

This survivor of the Gestapo spent his life, with his wife Beate Klarsfeld, tracking down and dragging the Third Reich's criminals to justice. A stubbornness rewarded in 1980 by the arrest of Klaus Barbie in Bolivia, then by his trial in Lyon.

If this former Gestapo leader was sentenced to life imprisonment, many war criminals escaped prison because of their poor health. For example, Hubert Zafke, an SS nurse at the Auschwitz camp, was to be tried in 2016 for complicity in the extermination of more than 3,000 Jews. But the justice closed the lawsuit because of "his insanity", preventing him from "to follow the hearings, to understand the procedure and to defend himself in an efficient way", had then explained the Court in a communique.

That same year, Helma Kissner, a radio operator in the Auschwitz extermination camp, found herself in the Kiel court, accused of taking part in the killing of at least 260,000 people. But the court said the nonagenarian was unfit to stand trial because of her physical condition.

Impunity

"In many Eastern European countries allied with Nazis such as Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, not a single war criminal has ended up in prison – not a single one with BFMTV. com Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust.

According to this world specialist in the hunt for Nazis, "Lithuania has done everything to ensure that these criminals are not punished". He cites in particular the case of three Lithuanian collaborators whose responsibility in the Holocaust was only recognized very late and in a "totally unsatisfactory way." The authorities waited until they were old and sick to begin the prosecution. were never compelled to appear before the Court and were finally declared unfit to serve their sentences, one of whom even escaped execution because his wife was sick and had to It's absurd. "

This history suggests the fate that could be reserved for Bruno Dey after his trial opens this Thursday. The court has already announced that hearings will be restricted to two a week and two hours each, due to the precarious health of the nonagenarian. "It's frustrating and extremely disappointing," Serge Karlsfeld reacts.

The Nazi hunter says he is "shared" about the judicial treatment reserved for the actors of the Holocaust and underlines a pitfall in the functioning of the Germanic authorities.

"Primary" criminals

He explains that between the 1950s and 1970s, Germany concentrated on "primary criminals – those who killed with their hands by responding to orders from above – because the law provided for criminal perpetuity for these crimes, but the big criminals, those who gave the orders, fell through the cracks because they did not directly execute the Jews. put their intelligence at the service of crime ".

Since then, the functioning of Germanic justice has evolved on this subject but is still not in line with the idea of ​​the one whose father was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. "By law, a person who has participated in a criminal organization must be convicted unless it can prove that he or she is innocent." But the former SS who are now tried are 90 or 95 years old and are unable to prove it. , especially since there are very few witnesses still alive, "explains Serge Klarsfeld. This operation gives a character "almost automatic and blind" to the sentence – already little executed – and deprives her a little more sense, he judges.

Catharsis

"This justice is not effective at all," says Efraim Zuroff, who points to the responsibility of several countries, such as Ukraine, which refuse to take legal action against Nazi collaborators. To put these criminals face their responsibilities, this hunter of Nazis established in 2016, with the Wiesenthal center, a list in which the names of actors of the Holocaust still unpunished. There are now six of them. But the historian specifies that "seventeen other persons, whose names have not been communicated, are accused of having served in the concentration camps by the German authorities".

In fact, "hundreds or even thousands of former Nazis who participated in the genocide of six million Jews are still at large, but faced with such a magnitude, we are unable to bring all of them to justice. is purely symbolic, "he says. Still, these trials serve as catharsis to the survivors of the Holocaust, "they allow them to close the chapter of these atrocities," said Efraïm Zuroff. "And they remind war criminals that the passage of time does not diminish their responsibility," he concludes.