Oskar Groening: 'Auschwitz book-keeper' jailed for four years over role in murder of 300,000 people - Polidicks

I remember seeing some threads about him a while back, so here's some closure: [QUOTE]The man known as the ‘Book-keeper of Auschwitz’ has been sentenced for four years after being convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people in one of the Nazi regime's most infamous concentration camps. A court found 94-year-old Oskar Groening guilty after a high-profile court case, labelled by one Holocaust survivor as "the trial of the last Nazi". Groening, who was responsible for sorting through the confiscated possessions of Jews brought to the Nazi’s most infamous camp, admitted “moral guilt” for his actions during the case. However, lawyers arguing for the elderly German said he had not facilitated genocide - a charge disproved by prosecutors who claimed that he helped the camp to run smoothly.[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/oskar-groening-live-auschwitz-bookkeeper-found-guilty-and-sentenced-to-four-years-in-prison-10389677.html[/url] [url]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/15/auschwitz-guard-oskar-groening-jailed-over-mass-murder[/url]

Jesus fucking Christ hes 94, give the poor guy a break

What a bunch of bullshit, he was just a bookkeeper and therefore "helped" the camp by running smoothly? What should he have done? NOT do the work and risk getting executed by the NS? It's not like many people had another chance.

Don't psychological theories on obedience, responsibility laws and the fact that he's ninety fucking four basically get this guy out of this? [editline]15th July 2015[/editline] I suppose it brings up the old question of: if a soldier is ordered by a commanding officer to execute an innocent person is the soldier to be held accountable? Only this dude didn't fire the figurative bullet, he just wrote down who was being killed.

[QUOTE=Irockz;48211412]Jesus fucking Christ hes 94, give the poor guy a break[/QUOTE] While I agree, I don't think someone should be allowed to get away with crime by being old.

[QUOTE=DMGaina;48211461]What a bunch of bullshit, he was just a bookkeeper and therefore "helped" the camp by running smoothly? What should he have done? NOT do the work and risk getting executed by the NS? It's not like many people had another chance.[/QUOTE] And after his execution another person would have been forced to do the job or face execution, etc

This is why you go after the officers not the regular troopers

[QUOTE=Rossy167;48211466]Don't psychological theories on obedience, responsibility laws and the fact that he's ninety fucking four basically get this guy out of this? [editline]15th July 2015[/editline] I suppose it brings up the old question of: if a soldier is ordered by a commanding officer to execute an innocent person is the soldier to be held accountable? Only this dude didn't fire the figurative bullet, he just wrote down who was being killed.[/QUOTE] Yes, the soldier is accountable. This is why a lot of people tried to get away with Vietnam war crimes with the "I was told to!" excuse and rightfully failed to do so. The US army specifically says that when a superior orders you to commit a crime you should refuse or face the consrquences. The point is to make such crimes personal responsibility of actor. It's much easier to murder innocents when you know you can blame it all on your commander or whatever. This guy could sabotage the camp, he didnt. Not acting still has conequences and here they are. 4 years is extremely tame for assisting a murder of 300 00, I dont find the "just a bookkeeper" excuse good enough.

[QUOTE=MuffinZerg;48211571]Yes, the soldier is accountable. This is why a lot of people tried to get away with Vietnam war crimes with the "I was told to!" excuse and rightfully failed to do so. The US army specifically says that when a superior orders you to commit a crime you should refuse or face the consrquences. The point is to make such crimes personal responsibility of actor. It's much easier to murder innocents when you know you can blame it all on your commander or whatever. This guy could sabotage the camp, he didnt. Not acting still has conequences and here they are. 4 years is extremely tame for assisting a murder of 300 00, I dont find the "just a bookkeeper" excuse good enough.[/QUOTE] Do you not realise that many of these people were [i]forced[/i] to work in these positions, and faced execution otherwise? There are a million reasons why he couldn't just sabotage the camp - especially in the position of a [i]bookkeeper.[/i]

It's difficult to argue that his role didn't play a part in the killing. Oskar Groening was a member of the Waffen-SS. You didn't get forcefully conscripted into it until much later in the war, and Groening joined it in 1940, voluntarily. He received orders to report to the commandant of Auschwitz in 1942 after being told that his desk job would be reserved for an injured veteran. At that time, the commandant was a man named Rudolf Höss, a name that the world would become unfortunately intimately familiar with post-war. Groening was responsible for sorting through the confiscated possessions and money of people arriving at the camp. Effectively, his duties in the camp consisted of retrieving, guarding and then sorting through the items that the deportees had. Once he had sorted through all of it, his responsibility was also to pack and send the varied currencies to Berlin. While his initial objections to the extermination at Auschwitz were also noted by his superiors, it has to be put out there that the guy didn't actually object at the extermination of jews. He simply objected to the way it was being done, as he had witnessed an incident involving an SS guard's boot meeting a baby left on the arrival ramp which resulted him complaining to his superior officer. His complaint was rejected. To quote Groening: "If the extermination of jews is necessary, it should be done within a certain framework." Once he had witnessed the gassing and burning of prisoner bodies, Groening decided that he had had enough and approached one of his superiors again, raising a complaint. The apparent result of this complaint was that Groening was reminded of the oath he gave and then returned to work. Groening transferred to an SS combat unit in 1944, by his own request, and was wounded while performing battlefield duties there. When his unit surrendered in 1945, he declared to the British that his prior duty station before combat duties was the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt, the SS main economic and administrative department. His justification for this was that "the winners are always right" and that "the things that happened at Auschwitz did not always comply with human rights." You can decide for yourself if Groening is guilty of accessory to murder, but to me, he always knew that he was considering the way he treated the matter post war. He certainly felt that he was responsible based on the false information that he provided the British about what he had done, and during family dinners post war insisted that Auschwitz never be mentioned in the same sentence with his name. To me, Groening is a war criminal. He may have carried out his duties as requested and there was certainly the possibility of punishment or reassignment if he objected, but I doubt that he would have been outright shot on the spot for wanting to leave. Because that's ultimately what he ended up doing, but only after working at the camp for 2 years. All this, combined with the knowledge that his fear of responsibility seemed to have far outweighed his fear of death considering his combat post after Auschwitz, and the lies he told to cover up his immediate past, speak more about the guy than what he himself says. It is a shame that the judgment came so late, and while he regrets his actions now, they cannot be dismissed based on the fact that he was told by others to do thus.

Jesus Christ, if you [B]HAVE [/B]to appease the crazies then make it a suspended sentence. There's a point where punishing someone isn't just silly but downright stupid, and this is waaay past it.

[quote]The case in Lueneburg in Northern Germany heard testimonies from a number of Holocaust survivors – one of whom prompted Groening to admit he had never fully considered the implications of his involvement with the Nazi’s actions. [...] The four year sentence imposed by judges went beyond the three year sentence sought by the prosecution.[/quote] What the hell? [quote]World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder welcomed the court’s decision, saying that “justice has been done”. Mr Lauder continued: “Mr Gröning was only a small cog in the Nazi death machine, but without the actions of people like him, the mass murder of millions of Jews and others would not have been possible.” He added that it was “right” that Groening may spend his final years in prison and “that is a small punishment for the unspeakable crimes he abetted." [/quote] Man, some people put a really sick twist on Justice. What's this sentence even supposed to accomplish on a practical level? Yeah that'll show him not to work what was considered a fairly ordinary job at the time, with no voluntary direct involvement with what's in retrospect clearly completely bonkers and evil atrocities. This isn't justice that serves a rehabilitating purpose or keeps society safe from a dangerous criminal, this is just payback.

hot off the press [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb3QUs7SR4g[/media] You've got to remember this guy only was identified because he stood up to Auschwitz deniers and said he was living evidence to account for the historical events. Although there needs to be some form of reasonable justice, you need to identify what is there actually is to convict. He's a war criminal who should have been put on trial a long time ago, now he's a frail old man who struggles to make it into a courtroom.

This man should not be in prison. I'm not against prosecuting people who are old for crimes in the past but hes 94 for gods sake let him live out his last years in dignity. I imagine hes spent the majority of his life coming to terms with what he did and I'm sure the thought of it all has haunted him ever since, this is just people taking out their frustrations over the entire holocaust on one person.

[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;48211614]Man, some people put a really sick twist on Justice. What's this sentence even supposed to accomplish on a practical level? Yeah that'll show him not to work what was considered a fairly ordinary job at the time, with no voluntary direct involvement with what's in retrospect clearly completely bonkers and evil atrocities. This isn't justice that serves a rehabilitating purpose or keeps society safe from a dangerous criminal, this is just payback.[/QUOTE] I'm not sure the job of sorting the valuables of people of people he was almost certainly aware were being slaughtered wholesale particularly counts as a 'fairly ordinary job', even in Nazi Germany. 'No-direct involvement' is a complete misnomer with his duties. He was pretty involved with the profiteering the German government made through the slaughter of prisoners. I don't get why we should ignore his culpability in allowing these things to happen even if he wasn't the one who was literally committing the act. I mean, I wouldn't rank the Einsatzgruppen members who refused to shoot polish jews in the forests on the same level as their officers or the ones who did do so. At the same time I wouldn't say they weren't somehow directly involved or didn't have a responsibility for what occurred. [editline]15th July 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=LuaChobo;48211702]I hate to defend an ex-nazi, but what he did wasn't illegal then, and it wasn't just a direct superior it was the entire fucking government.[/QUOTE] Sorry dude, this didn't work at the Nuremberg trials. It's not going to work now.

[QUOTE=DMGaina;48211461]What should he have done? NOT do the work and risk getting executed by the NS? It's not like many people had another chance.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Gen. Crumpets;48211581]Do you not realise that many of these people were [i]forced[/i] to work in these positions, and faced execution otherwise? There are a million reasons why he couldn't just sabotage the camp - especially in the position of a [i]bookkeeper.[/i][/QUOTE] I hear this a lot but it's pretty much a myth, you can find lots of references in German records to objectors being transferred to other duties. If there's one thing the Nazis were good at, it was maximizing the efficiency of their personnel. Beyond that, the guy was an SS officer at a time when the SS was fully volunteers, so he wasn't some conscript forced into service. We can talk about whether he deserves to be punished now (and I lean towards no, personally), but make no mistake, he was there because he chose to be there.

[QUOTE=Silentfood;48211659]hot off the press [B]You've got to remember this guy only was identified because he stood up to Auschwitz deniers and said he was living evidence to account for the historical events.[/B] Although there needs to be some form of reasonable justice, you need to identify what is there actually is to convict. He's a war criminal who should have been put on trial a long time ago, now he's a frail old man who struggles to make it into a courtroom.[/QUOTE] Considering that he took the risk of exposing himself for the "right" thing I think demanding a punishment for him is blind vengefulness, emphasis on blind.

[QUOTE=fragger0;48211682]This man should not be in prison. I'm not against prosecuting people who are old for crimes in the past but hes 94 for gods sake let him live out his last years in dignity. I imagine hes spent the majority of his life coming to terms with what he did and I'm sure the thought of it all has haunted him ever since, this is just people taking out their frustrations over the entire holocaust on one person.[/QUOTE] Why? Why should he be allowed to live out the rest of his life in dignity? Because he's old? Is there some inherent human right for retirement that supersedes justice for war crimes? Because if there is, this guy sure as hell wasn't about upholding it. Fact is, in the arguably completely subjective scale humanity assigns to the fucked-upedness of crimes, war crimes are the worst. Worst than rape. Worst than murder. And if there's no statute of limitation on murder there sure as hell shouldn't be one on genocide. Now, people keep bringing it up, but no- [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders"]"I was just following orders"[/URL] is never an acceptable excuse for participating in a war crime. Humanity said so at the Nuremberg trials, and it hasn't changed since. Especially considering than no- soldiers weren't executed for disobeying orders, just like this guy here who was simply reassigned when being part of the death machine [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1476157&p=48211606&viewfull=1#post48211606"]finally made him uncomfortable[/URL]. And one final point- book keepers for the mob go to jail, because they're part of organized crime. Why should book keepers facilitating genocide get a free pass?

[QUOTE=Novangel;48211482]While I agree, I don't think someone should be allowed to get away with crime by being old.[/QUOTE] He already got away with it, his life has since changed, the world has since changed. He'll die in a couple of years. Jailing him now only serves as shitty revenge. Why not let him die around his family instead of in prison? The guy was just a bookkeeper for an extremely large organization.

[QUOTE=ScumBunny;48211756]Why? Why should he be allowed to live out the rest of his lives in dignity? Because he's old? Is there some inherent human right for retirement that supersedes justice for war crimes? Because if there is, this guy sure as hell wasn't about upholding it. Fact is, in the arguably completely subjective scale humanity assigns to the fucked-upedness of crimes, war crimes are the worst. Worst than rape. Worst than murder. And if there's no statute of limitation on murder there sure as hell shouldn't be one on genocide. Now, people keep bringing it up, but no- [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders"]"I was just following orders"[/URL] is never an acceptable excuse for participating in a war crime. Humanity said so at the Nuremberg trials, and it hasn't changed since. Especially considering than no- soldiers weren't executed for disobeying orders, just like this guy here who was simply reassigned when being part of the death machine [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1476157&p=48211606&viewfull=1#post48211606"]finally made him uncomfortable[/URL]. And one final point- book keepers for the mob go to jail, because they're part of organized crime. Why should book keepers facilitating genocide get a free pass?[/QUOTE] Mob bookkeepers don't go to jail if they find themselves guilt-ridden and confess and help expose their organization.

Lmao he's just a book keeper. What'd he do? Kill people in there with books? If he did, then jail him, but if he just kept books then there's no point to putting him anywhere but home, specially when he's this old.

Generally speaking, Germany doesn't send elderly ex-nazi's to jail anymore. They check if they can send the guilty ex-nazi to jail but all of them are too old and crippled nowadays to be put in jail. They're given the sentence because in the end they're still proven guilty for war crimes, but the German government realizes the remaining ex-nazi's are so old there is no point in sending them to jail anymore. As for the moral dilemma that Groening was book-keeper just following his orders, the German justice system follows a doctrine in which just about every German connected to deathcamps is guilty. The idea behind this is that the SS, which guarded the camps, was a voluntary organisation and the Germans who voluntary joined the SS, and were unwillingly send to death-camps ''could see it coming'' due to the extremist racial nature of the SS.

[QUOTE=catbarf;48211731]I hear this a lot but it's pretty much a myth, you can find lots of references in German records to objectors being transferred to other duties. If there's one thing the Nazis were good at, it was maximizing the efficiency of their personnel. Beyond that, the guy was an SS officer at a time when the SS was fully volunteers, so he wasn't some conscript forced into service. We can talk about whether he deserves to be punished now (and I lean towards no, personally), but make no mistake, he was there because he chose to be there.[/QUOTE] My neighbor told me a lot of stories about the third reich where worked as an accountant for a mayor of a german town. She worked with the deportation papers of jewish families into ghettos or concentration camps. Every time she spotted a jewish family name she knew or had contact with, she manipulated the papers or simply removed the family from the list. She was already an accountant before the nazi party took over. The town she worked in became relevant for the nazi logisitics later on and they needed her for this position. If she would have refused or get caught manipulating the documents, it was concentration camp for her aswell. She was against the nazis back then and got beaten by an SS Officer for replying with "Guten Morgen" instead of "Heil Hitler".

[QUOTE=cheezey;48212057]As for the moral dilemma that Groening was book-keeper just following his orders, the German justice system follows a doctrine in which just about every German connected to deathcamps is guilty. The idea behind this is that the SS, which guarded the camps, was a voluntary organisation and the Germans who voluntary joined the SS, and were unwillingly send to death-camps ''could see it coming'' due to the extremist racial nature of the SS.[/QUOTE] It was also relevant for the sentence whether the accused was aware of the mass murders. In this case, this was true.

I dunno man. He was just a grunt, on the grand scheme of things. He was following orders, and if he refused, chances are he would have been sent to the very camp where he worked - and someone else would have taken his place. If anything, he was guilty of being strongly coerced -as the rest of his coworkers- into having a very, *very* nasty job...

[QUOTE=Deadman;48211606]It's difficult to argue that his role didn't play a part in the killing. Oskar Groening was a member of the Waffen-SS. You didn't get forcefully conscripted into it until much later in the war, and Groening joined it in 1940, voluntarily. He received orders to report to the commandant of Auschwitz in 1942 after being told that his desk job would be reserved for an injured veteran. At that time, the commandant was a man named Rudolf Höss, a name that the world would become unfortunately intimately familiar with post-war. Groening was responsible for sorting through the confiscated possessions and money of people arriving at the camp. Effectively, his duties in the camp consisted of retrieving, guarding and then sorting through the items that the deportees had. Once he had sorted through all of it, his responsibility was also to pack and send the varied currencies to Berlin. While his initial objections to the extermination at Auschwitz were also noted by his superiors, it has to be put out there that the guy didn't actually object at the extermination of jews. He simply objected to the way it was being done, as he had witnessed an incident involving an SS guard's boot meeting a baby left on the arrival ramp which resulted him complaining to his superior officer. His complaint was rejected. To quote Groening: "If the extermination of jews is necessary, it should be done within a certain framework." Once he had witnessed the gassing and burning of prisoner bodies, Groening decided that he had had enough and approached one of his superiors again, raising a complaint. The apparent result of this complaint was that Groening was reminded of the oath he gave and then returned to work. Groening transferred to an SS combat unit in 1944, by his own request, and was wounded while performing battlefield duties there. When his unit surrendered in 1945, he declared to the British that his prior duty station before combat duties was the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt, the SS main economic and administrative department. His justification for this was that "the winners are always right" and that "the things that happened at Auschwitz did not always comply with human rights." You can decide for yourself if Groening is guilty of accessory to murder, but to me, he always knew that he was considering the way he treated the matter post war. He certainly felt that he was responsible based on the false information that he provided the British about what he had done, and during family dinners post war insisted that Auschwitz never be mentioned in the same sentence with his name. To me, Groening is a war criminal. He may have carried out his duties as requested and there was certainly the possibility of punishment or reassignment if he objected, but I doubt that he would have been outright shot on the spot for wanting to leave. Because that's ultimately what he ended up doing, but only after working at the camp for 2 years. All this, combined with the knowledge that his fear of responsibility seemed to have far outweighed his fear of death considering his combat post after Auschwitz, and the lies he told to cover up his immediate past, speak more about the guy than what he himself says. It is a shame that the judgment came so late, and while he regrets his actions now, they cannot be dismissed based on the fact that he was told by others to do thus.[/QUOTE] Wish I could rate you informative. Thanks!

you don't magically get exempt from punishment because you're old

"The real damage is done by those millions who want to survive. The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes." -Sophie Scholl Yes, he was just a small part of the machine and yet he was still part of the machine. Following orders is no valid excuse.The sentence is not just "for show" it's about showing that his acts are not forgotten and not forgiven. It's beyond me how you can say it's about trying to make up for Germany's history. What would you recommend what we should do? Not giving him a trail would be a slap in the face of all survivors and victims. This guy was not convicted because he was in the SS. He was personally involved in the "selection" of people at the ramp in Auschwitz. That is a direct and personal involvement and why he was prosecuted. The German justice system has changed in the fact that in the years after the war there had to be an actual victim with name for a prosecution. Now the participation in the "elimination machine" is enough for a prosecution. Pedophile sympathizers and Nazi sympathizers are what makes Facepunch what it is, never change.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;48211928]Mob bookkeepers don't go to jail if they find themselves guilt-ridden and confess and help expose their organization.[/QUOTE] How exactly did Groning "help expose their organization"? [QUOTE]Gröning's application to transfer to a unit on the front-line was successful, and in 1944 he joined an SS unit fighting in the Ardennes.[3]:287 He was wounded and sent to a field hospital before rejoining his unit, which eventually surrendered to the British on 10 June 1945, on his birthday.[3]:287 [B]He realised that declaring "involvement in the concentration camp of Auschwitz would have a negative response", and so tried not to draw attention to it, putting on the form given to him by the British that he worked for the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt instead.[/B][3]:287 He did this because "the victor's always right", and that things happened at Auschwitz which "did not always comply with human rights".[/QUOTE] It took him 40 fucking years to actually fess up to the fact he witnessed the holocaust, and even then he only said he was there and saw it happen, not admitting to actually participating in it. Only in the trial itself he actually admitted to "sharing moral guilt".

fyi "justice is blind" also applies to age