A plea for clemency from a 96-year-old German convicted over his role in the murders of 300,000 people at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland has been rejected, German media cited prosecutors as saying on Wednesday.
Oskar Groening, known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz,” was sentenced to four years in prison in 2015 for being an accessory to murder at Auschwitz. But he has not yet started his sentence due to a dispute about his health.
No one at the prosecutor’s office in Lueneburg, where Groening’s trial took place in 2015, was immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters.
In December, Germany’s constitutional court ruled Groening must go to jail, rejecting arguments from his lawyers that imprisonment at his advanced age would violate his right to life.
Groening’s court battle was seen as one of the last major trials related to the Holocaust, during which some 6 million Jews were murdered by Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Prosecutors said Groening — who did not kill anyone himself while working at Auschwitz — had helped support the regime responsible for mass murder by sorting bank notes seized from trainloads of arriving Jews.
Groening admitted he was morally guilty for the work he carried out at Auschwitz, which included sending bank notes he found in Jews’ luggage to SS offices in Berlin, where they helped to fund the Nazi war effort.
by Reuters and Algemeiner Staff
{Matzav.com}
Violates his right to life? He should have been hanged in 1945.
Whatever justice is not done in this world will be done in the next world.
And he is pretty close to it.
He could easily get a job working for CNN.
Turn the pages. Naziism must be prosecuted. Jokes about him being a friend to watch on CNN is ridiculous. Our very soul was destroyed.
This determines dear hope. A prosecution can rest some crimes. Who knows if he is ready to die.
Forever is not enough for justice. There is now. And we will watch.
Very important news.