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'Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' dies before starting sentence

Rogue Valley

Rogue Valley

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'Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' dies before starting sentence

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Oskar Groening - the 'Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' - 10 June 1921 – 9 March 2018

BERLIN - The man known as the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz" who in 2015 became one of the last people to be convicted for crimes in the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews during World War Two, has died aged 96, magazine Der Spiegel reported on Monday. Oskar Groening was sentenced to four years for his role as an accessory to the murder of 300,000 of the Auschwitz concentration camp's roughly 1 million victims. He was in the hospital when he died and had yet to begin his sentence. Spiegel said Groening died on Friday but prison authorities had yet to receive a death certificate. He did not take part in any killings himself but counted cash taken from victims on their arrival at the camp. Groening's court battle was seen as one of the last major trials related to the Holocaust, during which some six million Jews were murdered by Adolf Hitler's regime. Despite his conviction, the start of his sentence was delayed by legal wrangling and his ill health.

He came to attention in 2005 after giving interviews about his work in the camp in an attempt to persuade Holocaust deniers that the genocide had taken place at a time when most Holocaust prosecutions still focused on leaders rather than rank-and-file perpetrators. Groening admitted he was morally guilty for the work he carried out at Auschwitz, which included sending bank notes he found in Jews' luggage to SS offices in Berlin, where they helped to fund the Nazi war effort.
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One of the few to admit his complicity in mass murder. He very well may be the last of the Nazi death camps personnel to be tried, convicted, and sentenced.
 
Grand Mal said:
I wonder- will we even know when the last eye-witness dies?
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Maybe another 3-4 decades.

The last WWI veteran died in 2012 at the age of 110. And WWII started 2 decades later. So taking into account children that had been in the camps, figure it will not be until the 2050s at the soonest.
 
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