A court deliberating on the Oskar Groening verdict in Germany has declared the Nazi ‘Bookkeeper of Auschwitz’ guilty of aiding in the mass murders of over 300,000 people.
Groening, now 94, was a bespectacled young SS guard at the infamous death camp in 1942, primarily assigned to collect and keep track of the possessions of doomed inmates, the majority of whom were Jewish.
As such, and until recent years, the accused war criminal had steadfastly denied culpability for any of the offenses committed at Auschwitz prison and by the Third Reich in general.
His trial this year was in fact the first time he publicly admitted to “moral guilt” for his role in Nazi atrocities, although Groening’s lawyers still argued their client wasn’t guilty as a matter of law -- a legal distinction and defense the judge has now rejected.
He sentenced Auschwitz’s notorious bookkeeper to four years in jail this week, which, considering the defendant’s advanced years, could represent the rest of his life.
That ruling makes Oskar Groening one of only a handful of the 6500 SS officers who served at Auschwitz to be prosecuted for the crimes they perpetrated against the estimated one-million prisoners who were brutalized and/or killed there.
