LUENEBURG, Germany, (Reuters) – A 93-year-old former bookkeeper at Auschwitz who is accused of assisting in the mass murder of Jews told a German court that he felt morally guilty for his work at the Nazi death camp, describing in detail the grisly killings he had witnessed there.
Oskar Groening, in what could be one of Germany’s last big Holocaust trials, is accused of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people although in his role as a clerk he did not kill anyone himself.
“In moral terms, my actions make me guilty,” Groening said on the first day of his trial in the northern town of Lueneburg.
“I stand before the victims with remorse and humility,” he said. “On the question of whether I am guilty in legal terms, you must decide.”
Groening was 21, and by his own admission an enthusiastic Nazi, when he was sent to work at Auschwitz in 1942. His case is unusual because unlike many of the other SS men and women who worked in concentration camps, he has spoken openly in interviews about his time at the camp in occupied Poland.
