Lüneburg, July 15, AFP/BNS–A German court Wednesday sentenced the bookkeeper of Auschwitz, former SS officer Oskar Gröning, to four years of incarceration. Gröning is considered one of the last possible suspects in Holocaust crimes.
The 94-year-old sat as judge Franz Kompisch read the verdict finding the accused guilty of being an accomplice to the murder of 300,000 people, mainly Hungarian Jews sent to the gas chambers in 1944.
The judge characterized Gröning as cheerfully accepting “safe office work” contributing to the working of “a machine with a single goal,” a system which was “inhumane and almost incomprehensible to the mind of man.”
The sentence meted out was even longer than the 3 and a half years prosecutors had sought in the case heard in the small northern German town of Lüneburg since April.
On Tuesday Gröning was given his final say in court and told the judges he was very remorseful over his work at the labor camp and said “no one should have taken part in Auschwitz. I know that. I am sincerely repentant that this realization did not come to me earlier and I continued. I truly ask your forgiveness,” he said in a shaking voice.
A group of Holocaust survivors released a statement following the verdict welcoming the conviction of Gröning and calling it a very greatly delayed step in the direction of justice.
In April Gröning admitted his “moral responsibility” for mass murder at Auschwitz and asked for forgiveness.
Prosecutors said Gröning worked at the death camp as an accountant and sorted and counted money taken from the victims.
In total about 1.1 million people, mainly European Jews, were murdered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex in Nazi-occupied Poland between 1940 and 1945 when it was liberated by the Soviets.