‘I am truly sorry’: Former SS Auschwitz guard breaks his silence 70 years after end of war
Hanning said he had been “silent all my life” about the atrocities he witnessed at the camp where more than one million European Jews died.
A 94-year-old former SS guard on trial for complicity in 170,000 murders at Auschwitz broke his silence on Friday for the first time since the war, telling victims: “I am truly sorry.”
More than 70 years after the end of the second world war, Reinhold Hanning admitted to a German court that he knew prisoners were being shot, gassed and cremated at the death camp in occupied Poland.
“I could see how the bodies were being transported here and there and then away. I could smell the burning. I knew that people were burning bodies,” he said.
“I believe that every guard knew what was happening. This is regardless of the duty that one was carrying out. Of course some were closer to it than others. By close I mean close to the killings.”
Hanning said he had been “silent all my life” about the atrocities he witnessed at the camp where more than one million European Jews died, and had never spoken a word about it to his wife, children or grandchildren.
I could smell the burning. I knew that people were burning bodies
“No one in my family knew that I worked at Auschwitz. I simply could not talk about it. I was ashamed,” said the white-haired, bespectacled widower, who owned a dairy store after the war.