Bookkeeper of Auschwitz faces jail
Oskar Groening was found guilty in murders of 300K people at camp
Berlin, Dec. 29: A former Nazi SS guard known as the Bookkeeper of Auschwitz, 96, lost his final legal challenge against being jailed when Germany’s highest court Friday rejected his appeal.
In one of the last cases against a surviving Nazi, Oskar Groening was found guilty in July 2015 of being an accessory to the murders of 300,000 people at the death camp.
Groening has been living at home despite the conviction as his defence team mounted an appeal against his four- year jail sentence, arguing that imprisonment at such a high age would violate his “right to life”.
But Germany’s Constitutional Court on Friday said Groening’s “complaint against the refusal to postpone the execution of the prison sentence was unsuccessful”.
It found that appropriate health care could be provided in prison and that “if there are any adverse changes in health during imprisonment, the jail term can be interrupted”.
“The high age of the applicant is in itself not sufficient to refrain from enforcing the criminal penalty,” said the court.
The court also stressed that Groening has been found guilty of “complicity in murder in 300,000 cases, something that lends particular weight to the enforcement of the punishment”.
More than one million European Jews were killed at Auschwitz before it was liberated by Soviet forces.
Yet of the camp’s 6,500 SS personnel who survived the war, fewer than 50 were ever convicted.