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World|life|April 21, 2015 / 05:03 PM
Auschwitz guard trial: Oskar Groening admits 'moral guilt'

AKIPRESS.COM - _82452368_026848265-1A 93-year-old former Nazi SS guard, known as the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz", has admitted he is "morally" guilty.

Oskar Groening spoke at the beginning of his trial for being an accessory to the murder of at least 300,000 Jews at the concentration camp. He described his role of counting money confiscated from new arrivals and said he witnessed mass killings, but denied any direct role in the genocide.

If found guilty he could face three to 15 years in prison. Addressing the judges, Mr Groening also said: "I ask for forgiveness. I share morally in the guilt but whether I am guilty under criminal law, you will have to decide.''

This is expected to be one of the final trials for Nazi war crimes. The nonagenarian only came to the attention of prosecutors following a decision to speak out against Holocaust deniers.

"I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria," he told the BBC in the 2005 documentary Auschwitz: the Nazis and the "Final Solution". "I was on the ramp when the selections [for the gas chambers] took place."

Mr Groening, who began work at Auschwitz aged 21, has always maintained that his role as a guard was not a crime. "If you can describe that as guilt, then I am guilty, but not voluntarily. Legally speaking, I am innocent," he told Der Spiegel in 2005.

Mr Groening served at Auschwitz between May and June 1944, when some 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought there and at least 300,000 almost immediately gassed to death. Charges brought against him in the 1980s were dropped because of a lack of evidence of his personal involvement.

However, following a recent ruling, prosecutors believe a conviction may be possible simply because he worked at the camp.

"What I hope to hear is that aiding in the killing machinery is going to be considered as a crime," Auschwitz survivor Hedy Bohm told Reuters news agency. "So then no one in the future can do what he did and claim innocence."

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