A former SS Officer, dubbed the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz”, has stood trial over the week, standing accused of over 300,000 counts of accessory to murder.
Oskar Groening, a 94-year-old German national, is currently in the midst of a long, and historic court case, which will see him trialled for his role in the torture and murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews who were killed in the gas chambers of the infamous Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
The murders, which occurred on Groening’s part between May and July in 1944, involved men, women and children who were deported from Hungary and sent into slavery, before being murdered in the gas chambers.
Groening served as a “bookkeeper” during the aforementioned months, collecting, sorting and handling the money and goods that were taken from the Jewish prisoners as they were being processed, which he then organised to be sent to Nazi leaders in Berlin.
The former Nazi made a statement at the trial, expressing his condolences to the families of those killed in the camps and expressed his “humility and guilt before the survivors and victims’ families”.
But the 94-year-old did not ask for forgiveness from the family of those killed who were in the courtroom, claiming that he can only ask forgiveness from god.
“In view of the scale of the crimes committed in Auschwitz and in other places, I do not believe I am entitled to make such a request,” he said, “I can only ask my Lord God for forgiveness.”
Despite admitting to what he called his “small part” in Auschwitz as bookkeeper, the 94-year-old said he did not know the full extent of what truly went on within the walls.
Claiming to know “only about the mass murder”, Groening said he did not know about the torture, nor any of the other crimes that were committed against the victims whilst they were alive.
“For example I had no idea about the terrible conditions during the deportations — that shocked me,” he said.
Irene Weiss.
But Groening’s statement wasn’t the only one heard by the courtroom that day.
Czech woman, Irene Weiss, 84, also stood before the room to deliver a chilling account of her experience in Auschwitz – the place she says took her mother and four siblings.
Her father, she says, was taken to Sonderkommando and was forced to work as slave labour, removing corpses from the gas chambers.
In her statement, the Czech woman admitted she was unable to forgive Groening.
“He has said that he does not consider himself a perpetrator but merely a small cog in the machine,” she said, “But if he were sitting here today wearing his SS uniform, I would tremble and all the horror that I experienced as a 13-year-old would return to me.”
“Any person who wore that uniform in that place represented terror and the depths to which humanity can sink, regardless of what function they performed.”
Groening is facing 15 years in jail.
