crimesandcuriosities:94 year old Oskar Groening, a former German SS officer stationed at Auschwitz c

crimesandcuriosities:94 year old Oskar Groening, a former German SS officer stationed at Auschwitz concentration camp, has been sentenced to four years in jail after being found guilty of having involvement in the murder of around 300,000 prisoners. The charges he faced concerned the time period spanning May to July in 1944, when 137 dark and compact trains arrived at Auschwitz carrying approximately 425,000 Jewish people to their horrific fate. Of that total, it was calculated that around 300,000 were instantly sent to the gas chambers. Although there is a lack of evidence that Groening had a direct hand in the mass killings, current law legislates that all former guards are culpable of being accessories to murder and therefore can be tried as such. At 21 years old, Groening admitted to being an enthusiastic Nazi and was responsible for the confiscation of possessions belonging to new arrivals in the camp. He collected any bank notes found in the luggage and then organised the transfer of the money over to SS headquarters, where it was used to further fund the war effort. According to prosecutors, his actions financially supported and directly aided the endurance of the Nazi regime. Despite seeing himself as innocent in legal terms, Groening sought forgiveness for his involvement in court, which was attended by numerous Holocaust survivors and families of victims. He stated “there’s no question that I share moral guilt” and acknowledged that he was a “small cog in the wheel” of the Nazi rule. He also recollected that, all these years later, he is still haunted by the screams coming from the gas chambers. -- source link

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