Former S.S. officer, 93, WILL stand trial for mass murder of 300,000 in Holocaust
Published: 12:47, Tue, December 16, 2014 By Allan Hall, in Berlin, Source - Express.co.uk
Oskar Groening, 93, will go into the dock in the spring of next year. He is the only one of a "dirty dozen" former camp personnel identified and charged over participation in the Holocaust in the past two years who will actually answer for his alleged crimes.
Former SS guard Oskar Groening, 93, will go into the dock in the spring of next year
The others were told that their cases were being dropped because of age, infirmity or lack of clear evidence.
On one night in January 1943 I saw for the first time how the Jews were actually gassed. These cries I have ringing in my ears to this day. This guilt will never leave me
The court in the northern city of Lueneburg did not identify the accused who will be tried on charges of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people but it is known to be Groening who was employed at the camp where an estimated 1.2 million people were murdered between September 1942 and October 1944.
Prosecutors from Hanover are charged with preparing the indictment against Groening who was in charged of counting, collating and shipping back to the Reich the money and possessions of those murdered in the gas chambers of Hitler's premier extermination camp.
The charges relate to a two-month period between May and July 1944, when an estimated 137 trains arrived at the camp carrying 425,000 people, mostly from Hungary. At least 300,000 of them were murdered immediately.
"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 agonising manner," the court said in a previous statement issued in September.
AP - The Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz I, near Oswiecimm in Poland, which was liberated by the Russia
Some 16 survivors or relatives of survivors have come forward, the court said, and eight have been accepted as witnesses.
News of the case comes a week after a court in Cologne threw out a case against a former SS soldier who prosecutors said was involved at the 1944 massacre of over 600 villagers in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane.
Groening has openly talked about his time as a guard at Auschwitz but claims that while he witnessed atrocities, he didn't commit any himself.
He has spoken in the past of witnessing terrible things at the camp.
Once on "ramp duty" - the place where the doomed Jews were sorted after arrival into those who would live to work and those who would be immediately gassed - he heard a baby crying.
"I saw another SS soldier grab the baby by the legs..." he said. "He smashed the baby's head against the iron side of a truck until it was silent."
He added: "Every night and every day I remember it for the nightmare it was.
"It was in 1942 that my SS chiefs in Berlin ordered me there.
"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.
"They had diamonds and gold worth millions and it was my duty to make sure all of it got to Berlin.
"Down the years I have heard the cries of the dead in my dreams and in every waking moment. I will never be free of them"
"It was completely understood by all that the majority were going straight to the gas chamber, although some believed they were only going to be showered before going to work. Many Jews knew they were going to die.
"On one night in January 1943 I saw for the first time how the Jews were actually gassed.
"It was in a half-built farmyard near to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. A gas chamber was built there. We were searching the wood nearby for prisoners who had escaped.
"There were more than 100 prisoners and soon there were panic-filled cries as they were herded into the chamber and the door was shut.
"Then a sergeant with a gas mask went to a hole in the wall and from a tin shook Zyklon B gas pellets inside. In that moment the cries of the people inside rose to a crescendo, a choir of madness. These cries I have ringing in my ears to this day.
"This guilt will never leave me. I can only plead for forgiveness and pray for atonement," he said.
Source - http://www.express.co.uk/news/...urder-Holocaust-Nazi