Oskar Groening: 'Accountant of Auschwitz' Nazi, 94, is jailed after being convicted of 300,000 counts of accessory to murder

Oskar Groening, a former SS sergeant, collected money stolen from prisoners' at the death camp
Jailed: Oskar Groening (Picture: EPA/TOBIAS SCHWARZ)
EPA/TOBIAS SCHWARZ
Rachel Blundy15 July 2015

A 94-year-old former Nazi guard dubbed the 'Accountant of Auschwitz' has been jailed after he was found guilty of 300,000 counts of accessory to murder.

Oskar Groening, a former SS sergeant, collected money stolen from prisoners' at the death camp and guarded their bags.

He denied criminal responsibility for killing the victims, many of whom were gassed to death as soon as they arrived.

But he told a German court that he took some moral responsibility for their murders and admitted he had been an enthusiastic Nazi.

Prosecutors rejected his defence, saying his actions as the camp's bookkeeper amounted to assisting in a mass murder operation.

Trial: Oskar Groening arrives at court (Picture: REUTERS/Axel Heimken)
REUTERS/Axel Heimken

Groening, who has been on trial since April, was jailed at the state court in the northern German city of Lueneburg today in what could be one of the last big Holocaust trials.

He looked visibly shaken when the sentence was announced, looking up at the ceiling as he held back tears.

He told prosecutors earlier this month he could only ask God to forgive him for the atrocities. He was 21 when he was sent to work at the camp in 1942.

The charges against him related to a period between May and July 1944 when hundreds of thousands of Jews from Hungary were brought to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in Nazi-occupied Poland.

In past years, prosecutors in Frankfurt decided not to pursue the case against Groening and some other concentration camp workers, saying they were not directly responsible for the killings.

But prosecutors in Hanover disagreed and their case was strengthened after the conviction of former Nazi guard Ivan Demjanjuk in 2011.

He was found guilty of being an accessory to mass murder despite there being no evidence of his having committed a specific crime while a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland.

Additional reporting by the Press Association

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