Former Auschwitz Guard Charged With 300,000 Counts of Accessory to Murder
German prosecutors have charged a 93-year-old man with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder for his service as a Nazi SS guard at Auschwitz.
Oskar Groening of Hannover, Germany, has acknowledged that he was a guard at Auschwitz but said he did not personally commit any of the atrocities, The Associated Press reported Monday.
He was a guard at the concentration camp in May-June 1944. Some 425,000 Hungarian Jews came to Auschwitz during that time; about 300,000 died in its gas chambers.
Groening, who reportedly is in good health, is one of about 30 former Auschwitz guards who German federal investigators recommended to state prosecutors to file charges against following the conviction of John Demjanjuk, who died while his case was under appeal.
Some 20 Auschwitz victims and their families are co-plaintiffs in the case against Groening, according to AP.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
