An Unregenerate, Degenerate Nazi

"Mr. Groening made a long statement about the things he did in Auschwitz and he confessed that in a moral way he's guilty in the Holocaust, but in the end the decision whether he's guilty or not needs to be made by the court."
Attorney Hans Holtermann, Lueneburg, Germany

People hold a banner reading 'Solidarity with the victims of Nazi terror' outside the courtroom in Lueneburg (EPA)

"I share morally in the guilt but whether I am guilty under criminal law, you will have to decide."
Oskar Groening, former SS guard, Auschwitz Death Camp

Now 93 years of age, Oskar Groening has lived an eventful and long life. No doubt he has experienced joys and sorrows, good times and bad, life's seminal events, in a busy life that would have enabled him to set aside any lingering memory of the unpleasantness of the war years of 1942 to 1944 when he served as a prison guard in the Nazi SS at he infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

He had been busy at the death camp, too. In 1940 he had volunteered to join the SS, perhaps because his brief stint as a bank teller was not dreadfully exciting. His experience in a bank led naturally to his being selected to collect and tot up money taken from the hordes of people arriving at Auschwitz. He was thought of as the "accountant of Auschwitz", a sobriquet fitting to his assigned task. A task far more pleasant than herding people into the gas chambers.

Well over a million Jews were herded into those gas chambers where Zyklon B did its efficient job, turning them into corpses that could then be shovelled into the giant ovens for mass cremation. Now that was a busy time; when 425,000 Hungarian Jews were transported to Auschwitz and 300,000 were gassed to death immediately upon arrival.

"Through his job, the defendant supported the machinery of death", said prosecutor Jens Lehmann.


The entrance to Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp (Rex)

What was a fellow supposed to do, after all?! He hadn't been apprised that his duty at the death camp would involve shepherding Jews into alternate work and death columns. But he did know, and appear to agree with what he declared was the purpose of it all: "The enemies of Germany were being exterminated".

And, as he recalled, testifying at his trial in a German court, he and other recruits were informed they would "perform a duty that will clearly not be pleasant, but one necessary to achieve final victory."

And "final victory" was, after all, the purpose of the Third Reich's mounting of a full-on war with its Axis allies against the democratic countries that comprised the Allies pact to defeat fascism and Nazi Germany.

As for the money that the young Oskar Groening collected, it was sent regularly to Berlin. As far as Mr Groening in his dotage still considers, that money belonged to the state, he informed presiding Judge Franz Kompisch: "They didn't need it anymore", he stated unequivocally, referring to the Jews facing death, relieved of their belongings and their money.

And finally, their lives.