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The 93 year old former Nazi SS guard, Oskar Groening, is fit to face trial next year for his role in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people at the Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland, announced the Lunenburg state court Tuesday.
More than 1 million Jews were killed in Auschwitz between September 1942 and October 1944, during WW2. Groening is facing charges of complicity in the killing of 300,000 people.
The prosecutors said at the Lueneburg state court that Groening was part of a team that received 137 trains, mostly from Hungary, filled with 425,000 people, of which 300,000 were killed immediately after their arrival.
They also informed that Groening was in charge of checking the luggage of the prisoners in order to collect their money and valuable possessions and send them back to the Reich in Berlin, in order to partially finance the war.
The prosecutors said back in September, “The accused knew that, as part of the selection process, those not chosen for work and told they were going to the showers were really going to the gas chambers where they would be put to death in an agonizing manner."
Groening claims he was just a guard at the camp and that he didn’t committed any atrocities himself nor kill anyone. He also confirmed his role as collector of the victims’ possessions.
Groening declared, “I was an official in the prisoners’ possessions administration, which basically involved removing the money, jewels and other valuables from the inmates, registering it and sending it back to Berlin.” And added, They had diamonds and gold worth millions and it was my duty to make sure all of it got to Berlin.”
Just 49 of the 6,500 guards in Auschwitz have been convicted for war crimes, and Groening’s trial might be one of the last, since many of the survivor perpetrators are too old and sick to stand trial.
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