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Auschwitz bookkeeper admits "moral guilt" at Holocaust trial

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Auschwitz bookkeeper admits "moral guilt" at Holocaust trial

4/21/2015

LUENEBURG, Germany (Reuters) - A 93-year-old former bookkeeper at Auschwitz who is accused of being an accessory to mass murder told a German court that he felt morally guilty for his work at the Nazi death camp, describing in detail the grisly killings he had witnessed there. Oskar Groening, in what could be one of the last big Holocaust trials, is accused of assisting in the murder of 300,000 people although he did not kill anyone himself.

"In moral terms, my actions make me guilty," Groening told the court in the northern town of Lueneburg at the start of the trial. "I stand before the victims with remorse and humility," he said. "On the question of whether I am guilty in legal terms, you must decide."Groening was 21, and by his own admission an enthusiastic Nazi, when he was sent to work at Auschwitz in 1942. His case is unusual because unlike many of the other SS men and women who worked in concentration camps, he has spoken openly in interviews about his time at the camp in occupied Poland.

His job was to collect the belongings of deportees after they arrived at the camp by train and had been put through a selection process that resulted in many being sent directly to the gas chambers.
He inspected their luggage, removing and counting any bank notes that were inside, and sending them on to SS offices in Berlin, where they helped to fund the Nazi war effort.

The charges against Groening relate to the period between May and July 1944 when 137 trains carrying roughly 425,000 Jews from Hungary arrived in Auschwitz. At least 300,000 of them were sent straight to the gas chambers, the indictment says.

Groening described some of the murders that he witnessed at Auschwitz. On his first day on the ramp where Jewish prisoners exited the trains, he saw an SS colleague grab a crying baby and slam its head against a truck until it was quiet. "I was so shaken. I don't find what he did good at all," Groening said, telling the court that he later went to his commander to request a transfer from Auschwitz.

He also told of an incident in late 1942 when he witnessed naked Jews being herded into a converted farm house near the camp. A fellow officer shut the door, put on a gas mask, opened a can and poured its contents down a hatch. The screams became louder and more desperate but after a short time they became quieter again," Groening said. "This is the only time I participated in a gassing," he added, before correcting himself: "I don't mean participated, I mean observed."
My personal take on this is that if you were a Nazi SS serving at a labor/death camp, then you are indeed complicit in any deaths/murders that occurred there. Probably, his advanced age and the accepted moral guilt of this defendant will mitigate his sentence if found guilty.
 
Simpleχity;1064549426 said:
Auschwitz bookkeeper admits "moral guilt" at Holocaust trial


My personal take on this is that if you were a Nazi SS serving at a labor/death camp, then you are indeed complicit in any deaths/murders that occurred there. Probably, his advanced age and the accepted moral guilt of this defendant will mitigate his sentence if found guilty.

What is interesting is that he seems to have had very little to to with the actual cutting edge of the business and decided to volunteer for fighting duty to get away from the nastiness of camp duties. This means he was at arms length and not a weapon in hand or line of command perpetrator. This would be one step further than any other defendant and would pose an essential question not yet asked in Germany or, better, actively avoided by applying a theory, whereby collective guilt does not extend to persons that did not directly participate. So in effect the court id hearing a case of a new category that would mean, if a conviction is returned that a much wider group was now considered criminal. That would be very interesting in a constitutional sense, as it would require resistance to crimes by the government from a very wide portion of the population.
 
He could've tried to flee without permission. Not saying this would've been easy or successful, but "just following orders" has long been refused as a defense

As to whether his actions deserve a sentence, i don't know if i believe he never directly participated in killings. He sure participated in the apparatus, including theft of the victims
 
He could've tried to flee without permission. Not saying this would've been easy or successful, but "just following orders" has long been refused as a defense

As to whether his actions deserve a sentence, i don't know if i believe he never directly participated in killings. He sure participated in the apparatus, including theft of the victims

He admitted that and what he did funded the war effort, thereby getting more people killed.
 
What is interesting is that he seems to have had very little to to with the actual cutting edge of the business and decided to volunteer for fighting duty to get away from the nastiness of camp duties. This means he was at arms length and not a weapon in hand or line of command perpetrator. This would be one step further than any other defendant and would pose an essential question not yet asked in Germany or, better, actively avoided by applying a theory, whereby collective guilt does not extend to persons that did not directly participate. So in effect the court id hearing a case of a new category that would mean, if a conviction is returned that a much wider group was now considered criminal. That would be very interesting in a constitutional sense, as it would require resistance to crimes by the government from a very wide portion of the population.
From my viewpoint, the book-keepers, the train-schedulers, the lorry drivers, etc, are just as guilty as those pouring the Zyklon B pellets into the gas chamber shafts.

They all served as facilitators and co-conspirators in a criminal enterprise.

This is why getaway drivers are also guilty of bank robbery and whatever other crimes transpire inside even though they never entered the bank.
 
Simpleχity;1064552527 said:
From my viewpoint, the book-keepers, the train-schedulers, the lorry drivers, etc, are just as guilty as those pouring the Zyklon B pellets into the gas chamber shafts.

They all served as facilitators and co-conspirators in a criminal enterprise.

This is why getaway drivers are also guilty of bank robbery and whatever other crimes transpire inside even though they never entered the bank.

I agree with your viewpoint. The problem is that almost every German alive at that time participated to a certain extent. And every German alive today profited from the inheritance denied the slaves and many others whose lives and whose children's lives were destroyed. Now these inheritors point their fingers at us in moral rage, because we do this or that, that they think evil. What do you do?

But this is not a German problem alone or even a problem of that time. It is one of every democracy run foul and every dictatorship. The numbers are huge comparatively of people that participated in one way or another. Afterwards there are just too many to usefully punish them and it does not end there. If it were a question of justice, well it would be bad enough for the legitimacy lost and the consequences thereof that you can see in to take our example Germany. But it is much more unpleasant as it is a precedence for all societies to note. It reduces the pressure on populations to resist and thus the probability of bad things happening.
 
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I agree with your viewpoint. The problem is that almost every German alive at that time participated to a certain extent. And every German alive today profited from the inheritance denied the slaves and many others whose lives and whose children's lives were destroyed. Now these inheritors point their fingers at us in moral rage, because we do this or that, that they think evil. What do you do?

Of course all who participated in this process has a measure of culpability, not the least of which are thousands of far more guilty Nazi's that managed to escape serious penal punishment or the gallows. None the less, 'every German alive who profited' and those who 'inherited' any benefit must be vanishingly small. Anyone familiar with the post-war impoverishment, hunger and destitution of Germany, the millions of German refugees from Prussia and from what is now western Poland, the imposition of Communism, etc. left 'the inheritors' with little more than ash in their pockets.

I suggest you see the movie "The Reader". While the story is about an illiterate former concentration camp guard who helped seal 300 prisoners in a burning church to prevent their escape (causing all their deaths), whatever the viewer thinks of her state of mind I found the reactions of the younger Germans portrayed to be the most intriguing. Their total incredulity that their own fathers and grand-fathers would have participated in such a horror, and the uncomprehending and pitiless contempt the young Germans had for their parent's/grandparents generational actions is almost shocking.

Justice was cheated, as knowledge of the hundreds/thousands who escaped to South America and elsewhere should remind us. The best we can do is to make sure that we "never forget".
 
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Simpleχity;1064552527 said:
From my viewpoint, the book-keepers, the train-schedulers, the lorry drivers, etc, are just as guilty as those pouring the Zyklon B pellets into the gas chamber shafts.

.

What about the american pilots who killed millions of civilians by dropping bombs on cities?
 
What about the american pilots who killed millions of civilians by dropping bombs on cities?

And remember- it was intentional that civilians were targeted- the Dresden firebombing and Tokyo are good examples of the Allies basically targeting women and children.
 
What about the american pilots who killed millions of civilians by dropping bombs on cities?

Yes, or the japanese who took part in the nanking slaughter. As is clear, the victors in a conflict get to decide which of the defeated are guilty of 'war crimes.' If they weren't going to prosecute more than a handful of japanese officials, there's no chance any of their own would be guilty of atrocities.

But some of us know better, fortunately
 
What about the american pilots who killed millions of civilians by dropping bombs on cities?

To end a war not accelerate it. The killing of 3 million Jews was to remove them from the face of the earth and they would have given the opportunity.
 
I totally agree that those who kept the cogs of the holocaust going are complicit in all those deaths. Thing is, this guy feels the same way. Over the decades, he has been setting holocaust deniers straight by telling them, "you are wrong, I was there, I saw it all."

His sentence should certainly take that into consideration.
 
I totally agree that those who kept the cogs of the holocaust going are complicit in all those deaths. Thing is, this guy feels the same way. Over the decades, he has been setting holocaust deniers straight by telling them, "you are wrong, I was there, I saw it all."

His sentence should certainly take that into consideration.

It's not like he has much time left on this planet so I doubt the sentence will be anything above a nice old folks home for criminals. He'll be fed, have his poop cleaned and somebody will make his bed everyday. I'd be really shocked if they decided to bring the guy anywhere near a real prison.
 
And remember- it was intentional that civilians were targeted- the Dresden firebombing and Tokyo are good examples of the Allies basically targeting women and children.

Of course it was intentional. They weren't trying to bomb a forest and missed. The allies had a policy of massive urban bombing to destroy civilian morale but many experts say it didn't work. The germans kept right on building planes and tanks till the end. You have to kill the soldiers.
 
What about the american pilots who killed millions of civilians by dropping bombs on cities?
If you want to discuss exterior events, then create dedicated threads on those topics rather than hijack this one.

This particular thread is specifically about the trial of former SS Sgt. Oskar Groening in Lueneburg, Germany.
 
It's not like he has much time left on this planet so I doubt the sentence will be anything above a nice old folks home for criminals. He'll be fed, have his poop cleaned and somebody will make his bed everyday. I'd be really shocked if they decided to bring the guy anywhere near a real prison.
He can be sentenced to a maximum of 15 years in prison. Mr. Groening has told reporters that he expects an acquittal.
 
Of course all who participated in this process has a measure of culpability, not the least of which are thousands of far more guilty Nazi's that managed to escape serious penal punishment or the gallows. None the less, 'every German alive who profited' and those who 'inherited' any benefit must be vanishingly small. Anyone familiar with the post-war impoverishment, hunger and destitution of Germany, the millions of German refugees from Prussia and from what is now western Poland, the imposition of Communism, etc. left 'the inheritors' with little more than ash in their pockets.

I suggest you see the movie "The Reader". While the story is about an illiterate former concentration camp guard who helped seal 300 prisoners in a burning church to prevent their escape (causing all their deaths), whatever the viewer thinks of her state of mind I found the reactions of the younger Germans portrayed to be the most intriguing. Their total incredulity that their own fathers and grand-fathers would have participated in such a horror, and the uncomprehending and pitiless contempt the young Germans had for their parent's/grandparents generational actions is almost shocking.

Justice was cheated, as knowledge of the hundreds/thousands who escaped to South America and elsewhere should remind us. The best we can do is to make sure that we "never forget".

Of course the country was impoverished after the war, as were the surviving slaves or the children of the dead slaves, who grew up without parents. But think of one of many examples. The Quant family that retained its assets outside the Reich and rebuilt its economic wealth with those assets employing thousands of Germans in their companies that had used up so many slaves only a few years earlier. They now own most of BMW and are the substance of the wealth of the population. The children are inheriting a functioning society built with money that the slaves should have got. Take the loans the Greeks were forced to make the Germans by the Wehrmacht during the war and the towns the Germans destroyed. After the war these villages were not restored by the Germans and the loans were never repaid. Someone got that money and was able to rebuild Germany instead of Greece.
 
Of course the country was impoverished after the war, as were the surviving slaves or the children of the dead slaves, who grew up without parents. But think of one of many examples. The Quant family that retained its assets outside the Reich and rebuilt its economic wealth with those assets employing thousands of Germans in their companies that had used up so many slaves only a few years earlier. They now own most of BMW and are the substance of the wealth of the population. The children are inheriting a functioning society built with money that the slaves should have got. Take the loans the Greeks were forced to make the Germans by the Wehrmacht during the war and the towns the Germans destroyed. After the war these villages were not restored by the Germans and the loans were never repaid. Someone got that money and was able to rebuild Germany instead of Greece.

I am not disagreeing with the moral concerns you express, but I think it as too simplistic. The Quandt fortune started long before WWII, when Gunther Quandt married the daughter of a rich textile manufacturer and then took charge of the company in 1883. In WWII he made an even greater fortune in WWI making uniforms, acquiring many firms in Germany and abroad prior to the second world war.

I am skeptical of the assumption that forced labor (which sometimes was a 'choice' foiced on the companies) made a huge difference in their profits or net worth after the war. There is no doubt that WWII dried up civilian (and international) sales but that it also created new huge sales for Germany's war effort - still, the calculus is very unclear. The 'ledger' would have to calculated the net difference in profits from what "would have been" without a war (positive or negative), deduct the cost of massive destruction of family factories, and the marginal gain (if any) from using unskilled forced labor rather than skilled free labor.

No one believes the Quandt's should have used forced labor, nor that in some factories (the AFA battery plant) conditions were appalling. But the assumption that the children are "inheriting a functioning society" built with the net difference in the cost between forced and wage labor (the money the forced labor should have been paid) is highly dubious - the Quandt's were got quite rich PRIOR to the war using free labor (like most industrialists).

In other words, had all industrialists used free labor they would have still profited (as they did in WWI) and there would still have been a society to inherit.
 
I am not disagreeing with the moral concerns you express, but I think it as too simplistic. The Quandt fortune started long before WWII, when Gunther Quandt married the daughter of a rich textile manufacturer and then took charge of the company in 1883. In WWII he made an even greater fortune in WWI making uniforms, acquiring many firms in Germany and abroad prior to the second world war.

I am skeptical of the assumption that forced labor (which sometimes was a 'choice' foiced on the companies) made a huge difference in their profits or net worth after the war. There is no doubt that WWII dried up civilian (and international) sales but that it also created new huge sales for Germany's war effort - still, the calculus is very unclear. The 'ledger' would have to calculated the net difference in profits from what "would have been" without a war (positive or negative), deduct the cost of massive destruction of family factories, and the marginal gain (if any) from using unskilled forced labor rather than skilled free labor.

No one believes the Quandt's should have used forced labor, nor that in some factories (the AFA battery plant) conditions were appalling. But the assumption that the children are "inheriting a functioning society" built with the net difference in the cost between forced and wage labor (the money the forced labor should have been paid) is highly dubious - the Quandt's were got quite rich PRIOR to the war using free labor (like most industrialists).

In other words, had all industrialists used free labor they would have still profited (as they did in WWI) and there would still have been a society to inherit.

Of course, I know the Quant history in more detail than I used. A good part of the cash i mentioned was earned outside the Reich as far as I know. But that doesn't mean that the cash should be eexempt from the rest of the fortune or should have been withheld from his slaves and/or their decedents. Why did they not get compensation, while the money was used to finance the wirtschaftswunder? And sure the industrialists were under pressure to use slaves. A number that did not amply comply lost their positions or even in a few cases their lives, if I correctly recall. But that is hardly enough justification for their keeping the cash and the slaves going home starved and broken. Their using the money to rebuild the wealth of the fatherland, while the others....etc.

This is btw not a gripe with industrialists or the Quant family or anything like that. I am mostly interested in the way so broad based severe crime was handled after the regime that had legalized the criminal behavior of the population was deposed. I am interested in the continuing repercussions from this method of dealing with one's societies breakdown of civil behavior and conscious bestiality.

Germany is not the only country to have undergone this type of process. It is the one I was able to watch best.
 
What is interesting is that he seems to have had very little to to with the actual cutting edge of the business and decided to volunteer for fighting duty to get away from the nastiness of camp duties. This means he was at arms length and not a weapon in hand or line of command perpetrator. This would be one step further than any other defendant and would pose an essential question not yet asked in Germany or, better, actively avoided by applying a theory, whereby collective guilt does not extend to persons that did not directly participate. So in effect the court id hearing a case of a new category that would mean, if a conviction is returned that a much wider group was now considered criminal. That would be very interesting in a constitutional sense, as it would require resistance to crimes by the government from a very wide portion of the population.
He was there from sometime in 42 to sometime in 44, then took a transfer to the front.
Guilty is my opinion.
Those that refused were transferred. No other action that I am aware of as in punishment occurred.
 
He was there from sometime in 42 to sometime in 44, then took a transfer to the front.
Guilty is my opinion.
Those that refused were transferred. No other action that I am aware of as in punishment occurred.

That corresponds to my take of the thing.
 
Of course it was intentional. They weren't trying to bomb a forest and missed. The allies had a policy of massive urban bombing to destroy civilian morale but many experts say it didn't work. The germans kept right on building planes and tanks till the end. You have to kill the soldiers.

German war production increased year over year.
Logistics caused them to lose. They were outproduced and out manned. If I recall the Germans had 8 million under arms at the end.
 
That corresponds to my take of the thing.

Most people were/are unaware of that. And I stand corrected by myself on a point that there was no punishment. 1 Camp was different and one special group as well.

The Einsatzgruppen had a high rate of soldiers going nuts to say the least. The commanders had wider powers to execute any.
Many Soldiers refused and were transferred. If you deserted as one post mentioned,you were shot.
There was one camp I found that was different. Belzec.
Belzec: Stepping Stone to Genocide - Chapter 6

In contrast to Reinhardt, Einsatzgruppen SS/Police units engaged in Jewish murder operations had the personal protection of Himmler when refusing to obey execution orders. This protection was without recourse to punishment or courts martial. No such luxury of courts martial was ever entertained in Belzec, as refusal to bow to Wirth's orders was not negotiable. The system of mass murder relied on the absolute fear of retribution by the camp commandants, particularly by Wirth, should they refuse. Josef Oberhauser recalls:

“Regarding Schluch (SS-Scharführer in Belzec), who Wirth had assigned to the shooting of unfit Jews (in the Lazarett), he said to me, face to face, 'I would have dearly liked to have shot him down in the grave!' Wirth made this remark, not for the reason that Schluch had not carried out an order or had completely refused (to obey it), but only that he had not shown sufficient vigor. This was Wirth. If anyone argued with him, he immediately went for his weapon. None of us were safe, not even me, a close colleague.”[1]

Einsatzgruppen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


HOLOCAUST: THOSE WHO DEFIED ORDERS TO KILL JEWS DID NOT DIE, RESEARCHER SAYS AT BYU. | Deseret News
Before a crowded lecture room, Kitterman discussed Hor-nig's story briefly, noting that while 50,000 death sentences were handed down by German Army officials for crimes as minor as stealing mail, no one was shot for refusing to kill innocent people.

However, officers such as Hornig were imprisoned, beaten, stripped of rank and prestige and threatened with death for their impertinence. Hornig, a staunch Catholic, actually ended up in a Jewish concentration camp with those he did not kill. Even after the liberation, he suffered at the hands of his fellow prisoners because they suspected him of being a German army spy - although he had hidden French Jews beneath his bed to save their lives.
 
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