German court finds ‘Bookkeeper of Auschwitz’ guilty

Groening, 94, who is accused of helping to operate the death camp Auschwitz between May and June 1944, has been convicted on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder.

“I know that. I sincerely regret not having lived up to this realisation earlier and more consistently”.

BERLIN (CBS NEWS/AP)- A lawyer for a 94-year-old former SS sergeant who served at the Auschwitz death camp urged a German court Tuesday to acquit his client of charges that he was an accessory to murder.

Some observers did not think he would serve jail time given his advanced age and failing health, which led to several delays in the proceedings.

Former Auschwitz guard Oskar Groening, second left, sits in a courtroom prior to the start of his trial in Lueneburg, northern Germany, Tuesday, July 14, 2015.

Groening worked as bookkeeper, sorting and collecting cash taken from people imprisoned in the camp.

Groening said when his trial opened in April that he bears a share of the moral guilt for atrocities at the camp but that it was up to judges to determine whether he is guilty under criminal law.

The prosecution sought just three and a half years sentence, admitting the accused “limited contribution” to the deaths.

Oskar Groening did not kill anyone himself while working at the notorious camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, but prosecutors/sargued that by sorting the bank notes from trainloads of arriving Jews he helped support the regime responsible for mass murder.

By keeping the confiscated belongings of the previous arrivals out of the sight of the new prisoners, state attorneys argued, he averted panic breaking out and facilitated the smoother operation of Auschwitz’s killing machine.

LUENEBURG, Germany (AP) — A 94-year-old former SS sergeant who served at the Auschwitz death camp has been convicted on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder.

But another of Groening’s defence attorneys, Hans Holtermann, argued on Tuesday that the state had failed to prove that he “aided and abetted a crime”.

But the legal foundation for prosecuting ex-Nazis changed in 2011 with the German trial of former death camp guard John Demjanjuk. Groening was previously investigated in the 1970s but authorities then shelved the case.