A 94-year-old former SS sergeant who served at the Auschwitz death camp was convicted on Wednesday for 300,000 counts of accessory to murder, and sentenced to four years in prison.
Oskar Groening testified during his trial at the state court in Lueneburg, in northern Germany, that he guarded prisoners’ baggage after they arrived at Auschwitz and collected money stolen from them. Prosecutors said that his actions amounted to helping the death camp function.
Presiding Judge Franz Kompisch said Groening had decided to be part of the Nazis’ machinery of death.
The charges against Groening related to a period between May and July 1944 when a huge number of Jews from Hungary were brought to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in Nazi-occupied Poland. Most were immediately gassed to death.
Unusual for trials of former Nazi camp guards, Groening has been open about his past throughout the proceedings.
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