‘Accountant of Auschwitz’, 93, admits moral guilt at start of death camp trial

Former SS Sergeant Oskar Groening told a German court that he helped keep watch as thousands of Jews were led from cattle cars directly to the gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp where he served as a guard.

The 93-year-old, charged with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder, said Tuesday as his trial opened that he witnessed individual atrocities, but did not acknowledge participating in any crimes.

He recalled how a fellow guard discovered a baby abandoned among luggage and bashed it against a truck to stop its crying. After that, he unsuccessfully requested a transfer and started to drink vodka heavily to cope with working at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, he said.

“I share morally in the guilt but whether I am guilty under criminal law, you will have to decide,” Groening told judges hearing the case at the Lueneburg state court in northern Germany. Under the German legal system, defendants do not enter formal pleas.

Groening testified in a lengthy statement to the court that he volunteered to join the SS in 1940 after working briefly at a bank, and served at Auschwitz from 1942 to 1944.