96-year-old ‘Bookkeeper of Auschwitz’ deemed fit to serve jail sentence

Oskar Gröning was found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people at the death camp during the Second World War.

He appealed for the sentence to be suspended, but a court in the town of Celle in Lower Saxony said that “Based on expert opinion”, it found “that the convicted individual is fit to serve out the term despite his advanced age.”

It added that imprisoning him would not infringe his fundamental rights and that “appropriate precautionary measures” would be taken to satisfy special needs he had given his old age.

Mr Gröning was an accountant at Auschwitz, where he sorted and counted money stolen from inmates before sending it on to Berlin.

At his trial he acknowledged “moral guilt” but said it was for a court to determine his legal culpability.

He also said he applied for a transfer to the front three times after his arrival in 1942 as he was so horrified by what he saw there. This was eventually granted in 1944.

More than a million Jewish people were murdered at Auschwitz before it was liberated by Soviet forces in January 1945. Of its 6,500 personnel who survived the War, fewer than 50 were convicted.