94-year old ‘bookkeeper of Auschwitz’ sentenced to 4-year imprisonment

The Regional Court in the German town of Luneburg (Lower Saxony) sentenced 94-year-old Oskar Gröning to four-year imprisonment. He was found guilty of complicity in the murder of at least 300 thousand concentration camp prisoners, Joinfo.ua reports.

It should be recalled that in the end of the last year, despite the advanced age of the accused, the Lüneburg court decided to open a proceeding against him.

High-profile trials against the Auschwitz guards were held in 1960 in Frankfurt am Main. The last case was closed in 1976 when one of the guards was acquitted.

Gröning fully admitted his guilt. He said that upon arrival at Auschwitz in 1942, he was aware of the murder of Jews in the gas chambers of the concentration camp. “I ask for forgiveness. You have to decide on my legal culpability,” Gröning said.

According to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Hanover, the suspect voluntarily joined the ranks of the Waffen-SS. In 1944 in Auschwitz, he was taking away the luggage from concentration camp prisoners. Gröning adnitted that he counted the money taken from prisoners and sent it to the Central administration and management of the SS in Berlin. Sometimes he delivered the loot to the capital of the Third Reich personally. That is why journalists call him ‘bookkeeper of Auschwitz’.