Oskar Groening, defendant & former Nazi SS officer dubbed the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz”, is shown in the photo above as he listens to the verdict during his trial in Lueneburg, Germany, July 15, 2015. The 94-year-old German man who worked as a bookkeeper at the Auschwitz death camp was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people and was sentenced to four years in prison, in what could be one of the last big Holocaust trials, Lueneburg, Germany, July 15, 2015. REUTERS/Axel Heimken/Pool
The following quote is from a recent news article which you can read in full at
Begin quote from news article:
A 96-year-old former Nazi guard and SS officer known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” has been deemed fit to serve jail time for his 2015 conviction as an accessory to murder, German prosecutors say.
Kathrin Soefker, a spokeswoman for prosecutors in Hanover, northern Germany, said doctors had determined that Oskar Groening was well enough to start his four-year prison sentence, so long as he was able to receive “appropriate medical care” while incarcerated.
“A 96-year-old has physical constraints but … he is fit for prison,” Soefker said.
End quote
Oscar Groening is a former SS man who worked at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He has admitted, in the past, that Jews were killed in gas chambers at this camp.
Groening said that the gassing of the Jews, in two old farmhouses, took place at night. As told by writer Laurence Rees in one of his books, Groening said that he had witnessed a gassing one night after he had been awakened by an alarm because a number of Jews had escaped as they were being marched to the gas chamber.
Groening said that he saw the lights on in one of the farm houses, and seven or eight bodies out in front of the building. He assumed that these were the bodies of the escapees who had been caught and shot.
Groening was “overcome by curiosity,” according to Rees. Groening and his comrades then stayed around one night to watch what was going on at the farm house. They claimed that they saw an SS man, wearing a gas mask, pour Zyklon-B pellets through a hatch in the side of the cottage wall. They heard screaming for a minute, followed by silence. Then an SS man went up to the door, and looked through a peephole to see if all the prisoners were dead.
Groening said that this remote area was considered to be a good location for the use of Zyklon-B which was a dangerous poison that had the potential to kill the SS men who were throwing it inside the building.
Until March 1942, the gassing of the Jews had allegedly been done in Krema I at the Auschwitz main camp. Krema I was situated between the SS hospital and the Gestapo building, not a good location for the use of a dangerous poisonous gas. That is why a new location for gassing had to be found.
In his autobiography, Rudolf Hoess, the former Commandant at Auschwitz-Birkenau, wrote regarding the gassing in the little white house:
Begin quote from the autobiography of Rudolf Hoess:
“Hundreds of men and women in the full bloom of life walked all unsuspecting to their death in the gas chambers under the blossom-laden fruit trees of the orchard. This picture of death in the midst of life remains with me to this day. I looked upon them as enemies of our people. The reasons behind the Extermination Program seemed to me [to be] right.”
End quote from autobiography of Rudolf Hoess
