‘They all walked … to where the crematoria and gas chambers were’
Former SS guard describes Auschwitz death camp in chilling detail
LUENEBURG, Germany — A former SS sergeant described in chilling detail Wednesday how cattle cars full of Jews were brought to the Auschwitz death camp, the people stripped of their belongings, then most led directly into gas chambers.
Oskar Groening is being tried on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder, related to a period between May and July 1944 when about 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in Nazi-occupied Poland and most immediately gassed to death.
During that period, so many trains were arriving that often two would have to wait with closed doors as the first was “processed,” Groening testified at the Lueneburg state court.
Though he was more regularly assigned to the camp’s Auschwitz I section, he said he guarded the Birkenau ramp three times, including one busy 24-hour shift. The main gas chambers were located at Birkenau.
“The capacity of the gas chambers and the capacity of the crematoria were quite limited. Someone said that 5,000 people were processed in 24 hours, but I didn’t verify this. I didn’t know,” he said. “For the sake of order, we waited until Train 1 was entirely processed and finished.”
Auschwitz survivors describe their arrival as chaotic, with Nazi guards yelling orders, dogs barking and families being ripped apart.
But Groening, 93, maintained the opposite, saying “it was very orderly and not as strenuous” on the ramp at Birkenau.
“The process was the same as Auschwitz I. The only difference was that there were no trucks,”
“All I remember is her arms stretched out in despair as she was pulled away. I never even got to say goodbye.
EVA KOR
AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR
he said. “They all walked — some in one direction some, in another direction … to where the crematoria and gas chambers were.”
No pleas are entered in the German system and Groening said as his trial opened Tuesday he considers himself “morally guilty,” but it was up to the court to decide if he was legally guilty. He faces between three and 15 years in prison if convicted.
Eva Kor, 81, was one of the Jews who arrived at Auschwitz in 1944. Though she doesn’t remember Groening, she said she can’t forget the scene.
“Everything was going very fast — yelling, crying, pushing; even dogs were barking. I had never experienced anything that fast or that crazy in my entire life,” she told The Associated Press before addressing the court.
Her two older sisters and parents were taken directly to the gas chambers while she and her twin sister, both 10 at the time, were ripped from their mother to be used as human guinea pigs for notorious camp Dr. Josef Mengele’s experiments.
“All I remember is her arms stretched out in despair as she was pulled away. I never even got to say goodbye.”
Kor, who now lives in Indiana, is one of more than 60 Auschwitz survivors and their families from the U.S., Canada, Israel and elsewhere who have joined the trial as co-plaintiffs as allowed under German law. Montrealer Elaine Kalman Naves is scheduled to testify next week. Among the relatives she lost was a six-year-old half-sister on whose behalf she is appearing.
Thomas Walther, who represents many co-plaintiffs, said he and his clients were happy Groening agreed to testify, but suspected he was withholding many details.
“There is an ocean of truth, but with many islands of lies,” he said.
Kor, the first co-plaintiff to address the court, described her experience Wednesday and asked Groening whether he knew Mengele or details about files he kept in hopes of learning more about what diseases she and her sister, who both survived the camp, were injected with.
Groening showed no reaction to Kor’s statement and his attorney, Hans Holtermann, said his client would try to answer what questions he could, but he didn’t believe Groening knew Mengele.
Groening guarded prisoners’ baggage on the ramps, but his main task was to collect and tally money stolen from the new arrivals, then send it to Berlin — a job for which the German press has dubbed him the “Accountant of Auschwitz.”
While he previously testified he was “horrified” by individual atrocities he witnessed, he suggested Wednesday his daily thoughts were more pedestrian, like when the guards heard a train loaded with Hungarian Jews would be arriving.
“If this is Hungary, they have bacon on board,” he remembered thinking.
Though he was investigated twice before and no charges were brought, Groening was indicted under a new line of German legal reasoning that anyone who helped a death camp function can be accused of being an accessory to murder without evidence of participation in a specific crime. Groening has testified as a witness in other Nazi trials.