Oskar Groening: could this be the last Holocaust conviction?

Oskar Groening was a 21-year-old SS officer and enthusiastic Nazi when he was given the task of sorting banknotes stolen from Jews arriving at the Auschwitz camp in occupied Poland.

Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, mainly Jews deported from Hungary, were sent to the camp when Groening worked there between May and July 1944.

As well as sorting looted currency and valuables, the German suspect admitted working on ramps where guards sorted the new arrivals into those who were strong enough to work as labourers and those who would be sent to gas chambers.

Groening was convicted of complicity to murder 300,000 victims and sentenced to four years at a court in Lueneburg, Lower Saxony, although his failing health means he may never see the inside of a prison cell.

Collective guilt

Groening denied committing atrocities at Auschwitz, and no evidence was offered of him being involved in specific murders.

Instead, German prosecutors argued that he helped the death camp to function by guarding prisoners’ luggage and keeping records of their looted valuables.

Prosecutor Cornelius Nestler said: “What’s decisive about the verdict is his central testimony and I will repeat it: Auschwitz as a whole was a murder machinery.

“That’s the decisive factor about this verdict. Whether in the end four years or five were adequate or three years, no one knows.

“But the testimony that Auschwitz was a murder machinery and that everyone who participated in it has to take responsibility is the important thing about this trial.”

The case follows the successful prosection in 2011 of Ivan Demjanjuk for accessory to the murder of thousands of Jews while working as a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Ivan Demjanjuk at his trial in Munich (Reuters)

Again, the German authorities managed to convict Demjanjuk without evidence of a specific crime, although he died in 2012 while appealing against the verdict.

Holocaust justice activists have praised the approach taken by the German courts, which paves the way for almost anyone shown to have worked at a death camp or for one of the Einsatzgruppen killing squads to be prosecuted.

Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Channel 4 News: “Germany is actively seeking out the perpetrators of Holocaust crimes, though it’s not a perfect process – it’s not being done as quickly as we hoped.

“It is much easier to bring people to justice now in Germany terms of the scope of their crimes, but it is being done at a very late stage. If this change of heart had happened 20 or 30 years ago, the numbers of convictions would be much higher.”

By contrast, other countries, including Austria and some post-Communist states whose citizens have been accused of helping the Germans carry out atrocities, have lacked the political will to jail war criminals.

“There has not been a single Nazi war criminal who has spent a day in jail since the Baltic countries became independent – and they have no shortage of suspects.”

Wiesenthal list

In 2013 the Simon Wiesenthal Center, named in honour of the late Holocaust survivor and famous Nazi Hunter, passed a list of 76 men and four women who served in the notorious Einzatsgruppen to the German government.

The Einsatzgruppen were death squads who followed the German advance across eastern Europe, rounding up and murdering Jews in mass shootings before the death camps had been set up.

Despite boasting more than 3,000 personnel, prosecutions have been rare and if still alive, many former members would be in their 90s.

As well as dozens of suspects from the Einsatzgruppen, the Center says it is still seeking war criminals who helped to murder millions at the Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Majdanek, Chelmno and Sobibor camps.

Child survivors at the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 (Getty)

Its latest “most wanted” report lists ten individuals, including Groening.

Gerhard Sommer, a German former SS officer accused of massacring civilians in Italy, was declared unfit to stand trial earlier this year due to severe dementia.

Vladimir Katriuk, a Ukrainian-Canadian, died in May denying involvement in a massacre of civilians in Khatyn, Belarus.

Another Canadian immigrant, Helmut Oberlander, alleged to have served as a Einsatsgruppe commando, had his citizenship revoked by Canada in 2012. Oberlander reportedly maintains his innocence of any crimes and says he was forced to work for the Nazis as a translator.

Alfred Stork or Stark was convicted in absentia by an Italian court for the murder of Italian prisoners of war on the Greek island of Cephalonia and given a life sentence. But he was not extradited and continues to live freely in Germany.

Johann Riss was also convicted and jailed for life by an Italian court over a notorious massacre of civilians near Padule di Fucecchio in Italy. He also lives freely in a village in Bavaria and reportedly denies any involvement.

Three suspects known only as X, Y and Z are wanted for the murder of Jews in Belarus, Auschwitz, Poland and Ukraine. Their last known locations are Denmark, Germany and Norway.

Also listed is Algimantas Dailide, a former member of the Lithuanian Security Police who was convicted in 2006 at the age of 85 for arresting Jews and Poles who were attempting to flee from the Nazis.

Despite the verdict, the Lithuanian court ruled that Dailide should not go to prison “because he is very old and does not pose danger to society”.

In its 2015 report, the Center says the more aggressive approach taken by prosecutors in Germany “has led to an extensive search for those still alive who participated in the mass murders committed by these units”.

“Thus Kurt Schrimm, the director of the German Central Office for the Clarification of Nazi Crimes, has announced that his office located several dozen individuals who served in the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek death camps, whose prosecution he recommended.

“During the period under review, these cases have been directed to local prosecutors throughout Germany and two individuals have already been charged, with one case about to open next week.”

Dr Zuroff said: “I think there is a reasonable chance that there will be additional trials in Germany. There will be a few more trials. We are certainly hoping that there will be as many as possible.”

But with most living suspects likely to be in their 90s, the clock is ticking for the Nazi hunters. The Center runs a campaign called Operation Last Chance, with a hotline and reward for information leading the arrest and conviction of the remaining Nazi war criminals.

‘No hate’ from victim

Auschwitz survivor Leon Schwarzbaum, who attended Groening’s trial, said he felt no hatred for the guard but could not forgive him.

He said: “What do I expect? Justice – nothing else. No hate, no hate. If someone like me lost 30 family members, after so many years what should one think? The only thing I want is justice, nothing else.”

He added: “I am happy with the verdict but I don’t wish prison on him because I know what it’s like to be in prison. I was in Auschwitz for two years.

“Unfortunately I cannot forgive him for what he has done. Maybe he took the ring from my mother’s finger when she was forced off the train, and my father too.”

Groening denied complicity in the atrocities at Auschwitz but said he was “truly sorry” for his role.

His lawyer Hans Holtermann told reporters: “He said in his statement why he could not ask for forgiveness. For him the scale of the crimes in Auschwitz were such that he felt he could not ask of the victims or their relatives to even think about the issue of forgiveness.”

But other survivors question the sincerity of Groening’s statements to the court and one called him a “liar”.

‘Old age should not protect them’

Asked if he had any sympathy for the 94-year-old defendant, Dr Zuroff told Channel 4 News: “I think that the punishment was fair, commensurate with his role, and I just hope that he actually goes to prison.

“He played a role, and the money that he stole from the Jews was sent back to Berlin and used by the Third Reich.

“Old age should not protect people who committed these heinous crimes, sometimes against people who were older than they are now.

“It sends a powerful message that we are still looking for these people and I would say that these trials serve a purpose in helping to fight Holocaust denial and Holocaust distortion.

“We have to pursue them with the same zeal – an ounce of the same zeal – that the Nazis used in tracking their victims down to murder them.”