Blake Hall
Is Oskar Groening, 93, a former guard at Auschwitz an accessory to mass murder at the death camp that killed more than 300,000 Hungarian Jews in just one month’s time (May to June 1944) while he was there?
The former volunteer SS member — otherwise known as the “Accountant of Auschwitz” — who now acknowledges that he “bears a share of the moral guilt for atrocities at the camp” for stealing and tallying money from the stolen items of the prisoners, will finally be tried for his role in Adolf Hitler’s master plan.
While he hasn’t admitted to participating in the detestable killings, he did testify that he witnessed one, and soon asked for a transfer that was denied sometime during his stint from 1942 to 1944.
“I share morally in the guilt but whether I am guilty under criminal law, you will have to decide,” Groening told the panel of German judges hearing the case in a court south of Hamburg.
The former Nazi could face a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison if found guilty.
According to the Associated Press, Groening faces 300,000 counts of accessory to murder, which weighs the argument of whether anyone who served at the death camp was complicit in the atrocities.
“Through his job, the defendant supported the machinery of death,” prosecutor Jens Lehmann said as he read out the indictment.
More from the AP:
In his statement, Groening recalled that he and a group of recruits were told by an SS major before going to Auschwitz they would “perform a duty that will clearly not be pleasant, but one necessary to achieve final victory.”
The major gave no details, but other SS men told Groening at Auschwitz that Jews were being selected for work and those who couldn’t work were being killed.
Groening described the arrival of transports of Jewish prisoners in detail, and recalled an incident in late 1942 in which another SS man smashed a baby against a truck, “and his crying stopped.” He said he was “shocked” and the following day asked a lieutenant for a transfer, which wasn’t granted.
Groening, who entered the court pushing a walker, appeared lucid as he gave his statement, pausing occasionally to cough or drink water. It is unclear how long the trial will last; court sessions have been scheduled through the end of July.
The trial is the first to test a new line of German legal reasoning that has unleashed an 11th-hour wave of new investigations of Nazi war crimes suspects. Prosecutors argue that anyone who was a death camp guard can be charged as an accessory to murders committed there, even without evidence of involvement in a specific death.