8 – Oskar Gröning
When we discuss Nazis who have escaped justice, we are generally talking about history rather than current events. Even those who evaded capture in the aftermath of World War Two were caught up with later, while those who were never found would generally be far too old to survive to this day. For some, however, that is not the case. Oskar Gröning is one of those people.
He was in his early twenties during the war and thus in his mid-nineties now, but very much still alive. He is notable because he reminds us that the fight to bring those who were participants in the greatest crime in human history is never over and that it is never too late for justice to be served.
Gröning had the upbringing that many of those who would serve in the SS had. His father was a veteran of the First World War and one of the ex-soldiers who immediately signed up the idea that the German nation had been stabbed in the back following its defeat in 1918. He was a member of the Stahlhelm, a paramilitary organization of former combatants that was nationalistic and antisemitic. Gröning was a member of the youth wing of the Stahlhelm and an early member of the Hitler Youth, having joined in 1933. As soon as he was old enough, Gröning joined the SS and, having previously been employed in a bank, was put into the accounts division. When he was packed off to work at Auschwitz in 1942, he claimed never to have heard of the place.
There, Gröning was tasked with counting the money taken from the Jews that entered the camp. He was one step removed from the gas chambers and the executions but admitted later that he knew what was taking place. He claimed to have asked for a transfer away from the camp twice but was refused on both occasions. When his wish was granted in 1944, he was sent to fight in France and was captured by the British in 1945.
Gröning was sent to Britain as a forced laborer and later returned to Germany, where he lived a perfectly normal life. It was only when, in the 1980s, he met a Holocaust denier, that he felt compelled to tell his story. “I would like you to believe me. I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I would like you to believe that these atrocities happened because I was there,” he wrote. Gröning never thought himself a war criminal, as he was not a direct participant and was simply a part of the wider SS machine, not to mention that he asked to leave once he discovered what was taking place. Psychologists have long debated his ability to divorce himself from his own actions and experiences as if he were not a participant in them.
He was, at the age of 93, arrested and tried for being an accessory to the murder of over 300,000 Jews. He told the court “For me there’s no question that I share moral guilt.I ask for forgiveness. I share morally in the guilt but whether I am guilty under criminal law, you will have to decide.” After over 60 testimonies from survivors of Auschwitz, Gröning was found guilty, making him the oldest person to be convicted for crimes committed during the Second World War.