'Accountant of Auschwitz' sentenced to four years in prison for 300,000 deaths

[bananas]

Source: Washington Post

Oskar Groening had always said he was “a cog” in the Nazi killing machine. He had been 21 years old when he was employed as a bookkeeper at the notorious concentration camp Auschwitz, responsible for cataloging the cash and valuables pulled from the luggage of newly arrived prisoners.

“If you can describe that as guilt, then I am guilty, but not voluntarily. Legally speaking, I am innocent,” he told Der Spiegel in 2005.

But on Tuesday, three months into the trial at which he stood accused of being an accessory to 300,000 murders, the now 94-year-old Groening appeared to have a change of heart.

“(Prosecutor Cornelius) Nestler said that Auschwitz was a place where you could not simply take part. I agree with that,” he said. “I sincerely regret that I did not recognize that earlier. I am truly sorry.”

<snip>

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/15/accountant-of-auschwitz-sentenced-to-four-years-in-prison-for-300000-deaths/

[bananas]

1. Oskar Gröning, Ex-SS Soldier at Auschwitz, Gets Four-Year Sentence

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/16/world/europe/oskar-groning-auschwitz-nazi.html?_r=0

Oskar Gröning, Ex-SS Soldier at Auschwitz, Gets Four-Year Sentence
By ALISON SMALEJULY 15, 2015

LÜNEBURG, Germany — In a belated act of justice 70 years after the end of World War II, a German court on Wednesday convicted a 94-year-old former SS soldier of complicity in mass murder and sentenced him to four years in prison for his part in trying to exterminate Europe’s Jews.

The former soldier, Oskar Gröning, who trained as a bank teller before joining the SS, worked from September 1942 to October 1944 at the Nazis’ grimmest death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, seizing cash and valuables from arriving prisoners. He was charged with complicity in the murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews brought to the camp in just a few weeks in the summer of 1944.

While he was not accused of gassing prisoners, his trial suggested that Mr. Gröning had witnessed enough violence and cruelty to have a clear understanding of the systematic mass murder carried out at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

<snip>

Mr. Gröning is expected to appeal, so it is unclear if he will ever serve time in prison.

<snip>

[bananas]

2. 'Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' Gröning found guilty, given four-year prison sentence

http://www.dw.com/en/bookkeeper-of-auschwitz-gr%C3%B6ning-found-guilty-given-four-year-prison-sentence/a-18584618

'Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' Gröning found guilty, given four-year prison sentence

<snip>

The 94-year-old was charged with complicity in murder on 300,000 counts in what is likely to be the last trial of a guard at Auschwitz. The sentence is six months longer than the three-and-a-half years public prosecutors had asked for; the co-plaintiffs had criticized prosecutors for setting their sights too low.

The 'bookeeper of Auschwitz' apologizes

Gröning has come to be known as the "accountant" or "bookkeeper" of Auschwitz for his role collecting luggage and valuables from incoming prisoners between May and July of 1944, when the "Hungarian Operation" was in full swing. During that time, when Gröning was 21 years old, about 450,000 Jews were deported from Hungary and sent to the death camp on German-occupied territory located in modern-day Poland.

The defendant also admitted to working the ramps where guards sorted the newcomers into groups of able-bodied workers and those who would go straight to the gas chambers. Gröning has consistently denied committing atrocities, but has asked survivors for forgiveness for his moral guilt for following the instructions of his Nazi superiors.

<snip>

[Sunlei]

3. I wish his sentence was four years of telling all about whatever he remembers from those times.

[ag_dude]

7. He's been doing that for decades

He didn't think he was guilty of a crime because he wasn't the one doing the actual killing but he's been very open about what happened in response to Holocaust deniers since the 80s...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Gr%C3%B6ning

[Sunlei]

8. He has been very open but if they had him talking for 4 more years there would be more

documentation for history.

He probably has memories of specific loot taken from people.

He can describe in more detail the local population, many of them were associated with the death camp military.

[bananas]

4. Former Auschwitz Nazi officer Oskar Groening gets 4-year sentence

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/europe/germany-nazi-death-camp-verdict/index.html

Former Auschwitz Nazi officer Oskar Groening gets 4-year sentence
By Laura Smith-Spark and Ben Brumfield, CNN
Updated 6:55 AM ET, Wed July 15, 2015

Story highlights

- "The need for justice remains powerful," says Holocaust Memorial Day Trust chief

- Oskar Groening was found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people

- The court says it took account of his age in deciding on a four-year sentence

(CNN) A court in Germany sentenced former Nazi officer Oskar Groening, known as "the bookkeeper of Auschwitz," to four years in prison Wednesday in what may be one of the last such trials, given the decades that have passed.

<snip>

"In deciding the penalty, the court in particular considered the plaintiff's age and that he should have a chance to spend some part of his life in freedom after serving his sentence," a court statement said.

<snip>

Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the UK-based Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, welcomed the verdict, saying it was "very likely one of the last times someone who helped perpetrate the Holocaust will be judged."

In a statement, she praised the courage of British Auschwitz survivors Susan Pollack and Ivor Perl in going to Germany to testify at the trial.

"Even 70 years after the end of the Holocaust, the need for justice remains powerful," she said.

"Oskar Groening was part of the Nazi killing machine which murdered 6 million Jewish people, and it is right that a court has judged him for his role. He chose to stand by and be complicit in the killing."

Perl is quoted by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust as saying: "Initially, I hadn't wanted to testify against Groening. I wasn't keen to go to Germany, but I felt that as a survivor, I had a duty to represent the victims."

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, also UK-based, said Groening's conviction "sends an unequivocal message that, although he may not have led or directly participated in the atrocities at Auschwitz, he was clearly an accessory to the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis."

[bananas]

5. German court finds 'accountant of Auschwitz' guilty

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/7/15/german-court-finds-accountant-of-auschwitz-guilty.html

German court finds ‘accountant of Auschwitz’ guilty
Oskar Groening, 94, who served in the Nazi SS at Auschwitz, has been convicted on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder
July 15, 2015 4:40AM ET

A 94-year-old former Nazi SS sergeant who served at the Auschwitz death camp has been convicted on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder.

The state court in the northern German city of Lueneburg gave Oskar Groening a four-year sentence. In their verdict, judges went beyond the 3 1/2-year sentence prosecutors had sought. Groening's defense team had called for him to be acquitted, arguing that as far as the law is concerned he did not facilitate mass murder.

The trial was the first to test a new line of German legal reasoning that has unleashed an 11th-hour wave of new investigations of Nazi war crimes suspects. Prosecutors argue that anyone who was a death camp guard can be charged as an accessory to murders committed there, even without evidence of involvement in a specific death.

When his trial opened on April 21, Groening testified that he volunteered to join the SS in 1940 after training as a banker, and served at Auschwitz from 1942 to 1944. By his own admission an enthusiastic Nazi when he was sent to work at the camp in 1942, he inspected people's luggage, removed and counted any bank notes that were inside and sent the money to SS offices in Berlin, where the stolen funds helped to finance the Nazi war effort. That earned him the moniker "Accountant of Auschwitz."

<snip>

[bananas]

6. "There was a self-denial in me that today I find impossible to explain," Groening said during the tr

https://news.vice.com/article/the-bookkeeper-of-auschwitz-has-just-been-convicted-of-300000-counts-of-accessory-to-murder

The 'Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' Has Just Been Convicted of 300,000 Counts of Accessory to Murder
By Sally Hayden
July 15, 2015 |

<snip>

"There was a self-denial in me that today I find impossible to explain," Groening said during the trial. "Perhaps it was also the convenience of obedience with which we were brought up, which allowed no contradiction. This indoctrinated obedience prevented registering the daily atrocities as such and rebelling against them."

Groening appeared in a 2005 BBC documentary titled Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution. Responding to Holocaust deniers, he stated clearly: "I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I was on the ramp when the selections [for the gas chambers] took place. I would like you to believe these atrocities happened — because I was there."

As to why he never questioned the reasoning behind the mass murder they were committing, Groening said: "We were convinced by our worldview that we had been betrayed by the entire world and that there was a great conspiracy of the Jews against us."

This extended to Jewish minors. "The children, they're not the enemy at the moment," he said. "The enemy is the blood inside them."

<snip>

[jwirr]

12. The last two paragraphs are very significant. Starts with the anger at the Allies who really set up

system of austerity that did not work (of course) after WWI. Betrayed by the whole world.

Then he gets to the real basis for the killing of Jews "a great conspiracy of the Jews against us". We hear it today from the haters - blaming the Jewish people for economic problems. The Jews in Europe had been the scapegoats for almost everything for centuries in Europe.

And finally the worst part of it all: the generalization "the enemy is the blood inside them." So they justify killing the children. That is the lowest level any society can get to.

Propaganda. Wherever there is discrimination there is propaganda. It can be seen in something as simple as a flag. Or the imprisonment of one specific group over another. Or in the names we call people. Or in a history book that does not tell the whole story.

These two paragraphs are so sad because even with the deaths of over 10,000 people we have not learned a damned thing - we are still selling the same kind of bull.

[frazzled]

9. There was a fascinating article on this in the New Yorker

this past February, by Elizabeth Kolbert, whose great grandmother perished at Auschwitz. It's Groenig's story, and her story, but it is also about the justice system in Germany, which has taken sixty years to put this one old man in jail. In "The Last Trial: A great-grandmother, Auschwitz, and the arc of justice" she asks "is it justice" and "does it even matter anymore?":

In response to the verdict, Germany’s central office for investigating Nazi crimes announced that it was looking to build cases against fifty former Auschwitz guards. “In view of the monstrosity of these crimes, one owes it to the survivors and the victims not to simply say ‘a certain time has passed,’ ” the head of the office, Kurt Schrimm, said.

But, of course, time had passed—from an actuarial point of view, way too much time. In September, 2013, the office announced that nine of the fifty guards on the roster had, in the intervening months, died. Others simply could not be located. The list of possible defendants was whittled down to thirty. In February, 2014, investigators presented twelve of the suspects with search warrants; the youngest was eighty-eight, the oldest a hundred. Three were taken into custody, then quickly released. One former Auschwitz guard, Johann Breyer, was living in Philadelphia. A judge ordered his extradition, only to be informed that Breyer had died the night before the extradition order was signed. Meanwhile, Demjanjuk, too, had died, in a nursing home outside Munich, while awaiting his case’s appeal.

In principle, the Demjanjuk verdict opened up “hundreds of thousands” to prosecution; as a practical matter, hardly any were left. And this makes it difficult to know how to feel about the latest wave of investigations. Is it a final reckoning with German guilt, or just the opposite? What does it say about the law’s capacity for self-correction that the correction came only when it no longer really matters?

It's a fascinating read: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/16/last-trial

[Yupster]

10. Seems like a bridge too far to me

I don't know what he was supposed to do?

What would a reasonable man do? Not a superhero, but a reasonable man.

He was a soldier assigned to a desk job. When he couldn't take working there he asked for a transfer to the front. He eventually got his wish.

I don't know what he was supposed to do? Should he have deserted? Become a martyr? I think that's asking too much of a 21 year old growing up in Hitler's Germany.

He has spent the last 30 years telling the truth about what he saw at Auschwitz.

[COLGATE4]

11. He wasn't a soldier. He was a member of the SS. nt

[Yupster]

13. He was in the Waffen SS

They were the toughest soldiers in the German military, especially the first three divisions, Leibstandarte, Das Reich and Totenkopf. They fought at the front of every major battle, usually at the point of the attack.

In your thinking, members of the Waffen SS were not soldiers?

[COLGATE4]

14. Not those whose duties were in Concentration camps.

[Yupster]

16. He had no choice in where he was assigned

And once he got there he repeatedly asked for a transfer to a fighting unit.

His request was eventually granted, he was sent to a frontline unit where he was wounded in action.

So was he a soldier while he was fighting at the front, but not when he had a desk job?

Is the definition of soldier that task specific?

[Behind the Aegis]

15. Justice