Four years for 300,000 lives
Yet the ‘Bookkeeper of Auschwitz’ won’t spend a day in prison because he’s now 94
AN SS veteran was given a four- year prison sentence yesterday for his role in the killing of 300,000 Jews.
Oskar Groening, who is known as the Bookkeeper of Auschwitz, was found guilty of being an accomplice to mass murder at the death camp. He is unlikely to go to jail however because of his age, 94.
Lawyers for survivors insist the trial has still dealt a severe blow to Holocaust deniers. Groening was responsible for counting the belongings confiscated from prisoners when they arrived at Auschwitz.
Giving a guilty verdict after a threemonth trial, Judge Franz Kompisch said Groening was not a monster but had willingly taken a ‘safe desk job in an inhumane system all but unbearable for the human psyche’. He added: ‘You said that you see moral guilt, that you were a small cog in the Nazi machine, but actually you had complicity in mass murder which was carried out by people like you thoroughly and mercilessly. ‘After the war, for 70 years, you denied to yourself what had taken place there. Memories can make life nice. Forgetting can make life bearable.’
Judge Kompisch, presiding in Luneburg, near Hamburg, said the case might be the last of its kind. He also noted that only around 6,500 war criminals involved in the Holocaust had been sentenced from among 172,000 who were investigated. Groening was charged with complicity in the deaths of 300,000 Hungarian Jews over 48 days in the summer of 1944.
He claimed he rarely met the 140 trains bringing the Hungarians to Auschwitz and had requested a transfer to a fighting unit when he learned of the horrors around him.
The judge rejected this argument, saying Auschwitz could have functioned only with the help of people like Corporal Groening: ‘ You wanted to join the SS because, in your words, you wanted to be in an elite unit and wear a snappy uniform.
‘You could have transferred to the front. But once in Auschwitz you retreated into the comfort zone of obedience.’
Susan Pollack, an 84-year- old Briton who survived the death camps, said the sentence was a side issue. She added: ‘I don’t care if he Groening got one year or ten years in jail, or even a life sentence, it’s not important. What difference does it make now?
‘But putting him on trial was very important. It was vital because every generation has to learn about what happened, about the Holocaust.
‘And they have to ask themselves “What would I have done if I had lived then, lived in Germany under the Nazi regime?”
‘He knew what was going on there. He knew where the posses-
‘He knew what was going on’
sions that he had to categorise came from. There were 2,000 of them – guards, administrators – there, responsible for killing my people, Jews. If he had confessed earlier that would have made it easier for survivors.
‘All of this brings the pain back to me, but I live with those terrible memories of what happened at Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps every day.’
Angela Orosz-Richt, a Jew who was born in Auschwitz and was a co-plaintiff in the court case, said: ‘I hope this important trial has also helped to educate today’s generation about what really happened and to combat anti-semitism.’
Earlier in the trial Groening had said he was moved by the testimony of survivors, saying he could not ask them for forgiveness ‘because only God can forgive me’.
Leon Schwarzbaum, who lost 30 family during the Holocaust, was the sole Auschwitz survivor able to hear the verdict, which came a week earlier than expected.
He said: ‘I’m satisfied with the judgement. However he shouldn’t go to prison. He was complicit but there were much worse criminals who are still outside, or they died without standing trial.’
But the 94-year-old added: ‘I cannot forgive him. There are people who forgive him, I can’t do that.’ Eva Mozes Kor, one of the 70 coplaintiffs, said Groening should be made to lecture students about the horrors of the Nazi regime. In 2005, Groening told the BBC that he had seen the gas chambers and selections at Auschwitz, where one million of the six million Holocaust victims died.
He said he wanted there to be no doubt among people today as to what had happened at the camp in occupied Poland.
Moshe Kantor, of the European Jewish Congress, said: ‘ We welcome today’s verdict and the historic significance of the trial of Oskar Groening, and the opportunity it provides to educate a generation that is all too distant from the horrors of the Holocaust.’