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THE CONVICTION DURING the week of former SS member and Auschwitz concentration camp guard Oskar Gröning was followed by a rather troubling outpouring of sympathy for the man. Convicted for his part as an accessory in the murder of some 300,000 people, there have been more than a few commentators who wondered why the courts would chase a 94 year-old-man some 70 years after the events for which, really, he was only a minor cog following orders.
If that is becoming the prevailing view towards the final convictions of the final solution, then we risk as a human race to easily repeat the acts of the past as time dims the memory even further.
Oskar Gröning cuts a figure far removed from the SS men of central casting. He is a very old, very frail man in glasses; not a Ralph Fiennes interpretation of Amon Goeth or Christoph Waltz’s fictional Hans Landa. Even pictures of Gröning in his SS days fail to cut the figure of evil we might expect.
Of course, that’s the thing about the Holocaust, as with most genocides. The people who perpetrate them don’t look evil, they look ordinary… Because they are ordinary. That’s the key to understanding the whole riddle of how a world goes mad and pours so much resource and industry into mass murder. There’s nothing special about Oskar Gröning, and he looks like he could be a kindly grandfather. He probably is. But he also volunteered for the SS in 1940 and served in one of the greatest murder camps ever constructed.
Nazis realised they needed to keep their charges calm on the way to the gassing chambers
He claims that he never murdered anyone by his own hand, but he did work at the sidings when trains arrived. He claims, innocently, that he was only minding the baggage that arrived. This may sound banal but actually it was a key part of the process. The Nazis learned early that they needed to keep their charges calm on the way to the gassing chambers. At Treblinka, where between 700,000 and 900,000 were killed, an entire mock train station was constructed to convince victims they were arriving at a colony for resettlement.
Minding luggage was a key part of the ruse: having people label their luggage and take receipts for them and, as prosecutors successfully argued, having officials like Gröning guard it on the other end provided a feeling of security and calm. “You’ll soon be reunited with your luggage and your loved ones, after this exam and a shower.” And so it went.
The problem of bringing people to justice was effectively ignored
Gröning could and should have been tried many times in the past, but following the end of allied military occupation the West German authorities became very narrow in their reading of the law. Cases were not widespread from the 1950s onwards, and officials and jurists found ways to collapse trials, acquit the clearly guilty or hand out light sentences. The fact that Nazi party membership had reached 8 million by 1945, up from 2 million in 1933, might go some of the way to helping explain why this was so.
Hans Globke, Director of the Federal Chancellery of West Germany and close advisor to Konrad Adenauer between 1953 and 1963, was never a member of the Nazi party. He had, however, helped formulate the Nuremberg Laws that laid the legal foundation for the Holocaust. He worked at the Ministry of the Interior and his boss Wilhelm Frick, who was tried and executed at Nuremberg as one of the men most directly responsible for the creation of the death camps, praised Globke as “the most capable and efficient official in my ministry.” The West Germans didn’t have to look too far to find skeletons, so they avoided the problem by ignoring it.
A lot of summonses got lost in the post all over Europe after the war
The Germans, to be fair, weren’t the only ones at that after the war. The Prefect of Paris Police from 1958 to 1967 Maurice Papon, personal friend of Charles de Gaulle and later a government minister, would only be tried in his twilight years for his role in deporting Jews to death camps. Anne Frank was pulled from her attic after being informed on by a Dutch collaborator who is estimated to have sold out up to 200 Jewish families in hiding.
In Budapest there is a simple monument of shoes beside the river Danube where Hungarian militias made Jews take theirs off before shooting them in the head to fall in the river in 1945 as the Red Army approached. There’s a lot of summonses that got lost in the post all over Europe after the war, that might also explain to you the seeming paranoia of Zionists who believe that the only place Jews are truly safe is in a Jewish-run, Jewish-defended state.
The current trial of Gröning only became possible when latter day German prosecutors established in law that they could try people as accessories to murder, as the statute of limitations on murder of 15 years in Germany otherwise absolved a lot of people from 1960 onwards.
If we are seriously contemplating whether or not these men should be tried for “only following orders” then I might suggest that we have regressed in our view of the world and civilized nature. It is well established that soldiers are culpable for obeying illegal orders; and after the war this was reaffirmed in the Nuremberg Principles. We’re not rolling back on that for the sake of a frail-looking old man with a tissue of excuses to pour his tears onto.
This is the least we can offer the victims
This last gasp of justice as these men reach their twilight years sends a mixed message to modern day genocidal regimes. The Nazis had in fact lived in fear of their crimes, and the SS went to great lengths to try to destroy evidence of camps as the Reich collapsed. Their own meticulous records, preserved after the war in triplicate, show security reports indicating widespread knowledge of and great fear in the general population of retaliation for the crimes committed “in the East”. What convictions of men like Gröning tells people today is that justice is relentless, but it often takes such a long time that it won’t matter to the majority of perpetrators. Murder away, lads. If you’re ever caught, it’ll be to spend your final days in a comfortable prison.
There is no statute of limitations on the Holocaust. As long as its perpetrators draw breath, few though they are, they should feel hunted and restless. It’s the least we can offer their victims. And for the benefit of future genocidal defendants, Germany and other European nations should take a long, cold, hard look at why it took till their ninth decades for men like Gröning to face justice.
Aaron McKenna is a businessman on columnist for TheJournal.ie. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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Sure if this man is being trialled they should go to America and see if there are any more nazi scientists still alive that were sent to America to work on their Military complex program…
I don’t think developing new weapons was deemed a war crime.
Although the use of slave labour certainly was and many would have known about that.
Really Reg?
Are you arguing with yourself Reg?
Many were also welcomed into Ireland – do you know the origin of the Folens publishing company?
Otto Skorzeny
Albert folens soldier in flemish ss
So when are people in Europe going to be allowed research this aspect of history without being jailed in Germany, France or other European countries. This video for example raises a lot of questions and interesting unpublicised issues:
Ursula Haverbeck: The Panorama Interview, with English Subtitles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPa_QeV9KDM
What good is it putting an old man in prison? If he is culpable then when are the entire nation of German people going on trial? They all knew what was happening. He was doing his job during the war just like the rest of them, if he didn’t do it someone else would have. Don’t get me wrong what happened there was awful and will never be forgotten, but it just doesn’t sit right to make this man the scapegoat for those crimes.
Not true. Most had no idea. The main extermination camps were located in Poland. No Internet then and the media was tightly controlled.
Excellent point Joshua.
And he certainly wasn’t a scapegoat. Most camp commanders were either executed or received lengthy prison sentences. This man is answeing for his part.
Wrong Joshua – the average Joe in Germany was completely oblivious as to the terror of the concentration camps. When the truth began to emerge after the war most were horrified that this was being done by their countrymen.
This article ‘forgets’ to mention than Gröning was remorseful and said sorry. That is key. Meanwhile hundreds of Nazis who actually killed and tortured people escaped to live their lives in peace.
And many didn’t. If someone is sorry and remorseful they shouldn’t have to answer for their actions? That’s nonsense. The sentence can reflect their level of sorrow.
I do think that the Nazis cynically used the fervour, misguided idealism and brain immaturity of young men and women to enlist them into their regime, and as always things are not simple. 19 really is very young and it is hard to imagine what it must have been like after the first world war when the country was completely humiliated by the allies post-war to have seen a movement rising that promised to return the greatness of the country. It has all the right ingredients to engage a young man at the developmental stage where he needs group belonging, something extreme and different, and idealism. Nationalism is always a tawdry thing in my book. It’s the same thing they still use to recruit impressionable young men into armies to go and kill people in Iraq or Palestine. How do we as a species learn to reign in basically what is the aggressive tendency of the male of the species and end all wars?
It’s clear that we all agree that the Nazi regime was utterly heinous. However, it seems to be that, since this is the iconic evil regime of the world, anybody in the SS has to be imprisoned while nobody is pursuing the soldiers from other western countries who were involved in (while not actually committing) heinous acts in numerous wars.
For Mr. McKenna to say that if this man who is in his nineties is not imprisoned then we will make the same mistakes again is stupid. How we will make the same mistakes again is through allowing the rise of racism and scapegoat minorities in our society (as we see in Irish society) and then mixing that in with extraordinary economic or political circumstances.
I do feel that this man should have done some time if they could have brought him to trial earlier – apparently they failed in this – so I do believe at this stage they should leave the man alone – anything else would just be tawdry and shameful. They should use him to educate young people, since he is remorseful about what he did as a youth himself. They should use him to speak out against racism and nationalism everywhere.
A point I meant to add is that we know all too well in this country how nationalism drew in so many ordinary young men when the IRA were at their peak of activity and involved them in heinous acts, cynically using their misguided idealism, nationalism, need to belong and lack of maturity.
A “risk” of repeat you say……what about Srebrenica?. There must be Serb soldiers quaking in their boots. Pointless jailing only to appease. He did more to educate on the atrocities than most. They had no confirmation that he was actually there save for his own testimony. Different times to be a 19 yo.
As for the “bookkeeper of auschwitz” term. Sensationalist
How many Africans have been put on trial for their parts in the mass slaughter and rapes that are widespread in much of Africa. What about the Japanese soldiers at Nanking who killed innocent children and prostituted thousands of women and let’s not forget their experimental prison camps. We could say the same about other soldiers in other conflicts who have done much worse than this man. What happened in the camps was terrible but this man couldn’t stop it. He was just a foot soldier who did his job there or on the Russian Front. Let’s call this case what it is. Revenge for the Jews. Will the Palestinians be offered the same kind of justice in years to come?
He volunteered – as did generally all German personnel who staffed the concentration camps of the Nazi regime. If you carry your logic to its ultimate conclusion – the Israeli soldiers are only carrying out orders too – bit for some reason that’s worse – why ?
I agree with you. So when are the Israelis going to court?
Anyone involved in concentration or death camps, no matter their age or health should be punished. There was zero regard for the wellbeing of the hundred of thousands of innocent people they all aided and contributed in murdering so without any further discussion on the matter throw his wrinkly nazi ass in a small window less cell where he can spend his final days contemplating his actions and how they under no circumstances should ever be forgotten or absolved.
I agree Derek still scary to see you got so many red thumbs. Plenty of nazi lovers in Ireland it seems
there’s talk of Cromwell being exhumed and put on trial ….
A flippant comment when there are many survivors and family members around today that were lucky to escape this barbarism.
There should be no statute of limitations on any crime.
Very good article countering the sympathy for this SS volunteer. Far too many of these guys got clean away and they didn’t have to flee to South America either like Eichmann. West Germany protected them through indifference and a poor legal system. The Allies too played their part by using former Nazi administrators.
The Nuremburg trials only caught a few big boys. Thousands of guys like this got away with it. But at least belatedly he acknowledged his guilt.
Somewhat hypocritical stance; your own country benefited from Nazi scientists.
Rocket scientists Wernher von Braun, Kurt H. Debus and Arthur Rudolph, and the physician Hubertus Strughold, each earlier classified as a “menace to the security of the Allied Forces” were “bleached” of their Nazism and given security clearances to work in America.
Should they not have faced justice?
Were they not responsible for more deaths that this individual?
They should also have faced justice, so no, not somewhat hypocritical in that regard. I already said the Allied administration of Germany and later Allies of W Germany were guilty of not pursuing Nazis enough. I’ve no intention of ignoring the culpability of my own country and never have. The emerging Cold War pushed Nazi crimes into the background. Again, that is no excuse for anyone to not pursue suspects.
Last year it was revealed Nazi war crime suspects even received social security benefits in the US, and worse continued to receive them in order to get them to leave the US.
They were useful. That’s why they kept them.
The opportunism and amorality is pretty nauseating. Almost as nauseating as the idea of taxpayers paying them to leave.
The Soviets we not to shy about using captured scientists either. Even General Von Paulas lived in relative luxury in East Germany until his death from old age unlike most of his men who died in the Gulags.
Oh right, Soviet Russia did it too.
That’s just hunky dory then.
Gimme a break….
Vin my point is that at the time Everyone was grabbing anyone useful from the Nazi regime and any of the research they had carried out including results of experiments carried out in the camps. Nobodys hands were clean at that time.
Look, Soviet Russia was a totalitarian regime under Stalin at the time. Without being flippant, that behaviour was to expected from him.
The method the US employed was actually slimier. President Truman issued an order expressly excluding anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi Party, and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism”. However, the aforementioned people in my first comment superseded this order under Operation Paperclip in order to deny the Russians and the UK access to their expertise.
The hypocrisy was breathtaking.
Whether one likes it or not those scientists taken under the Western wing so to speak advanced technological knowhow decades faster than would have done otherwise. Jet and Rocket propulsion, electronics, medicine all took a massive leap forward after the war due in large part to those scientists coupled with unlimited resources and money.
All very true. The most horrific crimes ignored in order to get ahead in the Cold War.
Jurgen. If the West hadn’t taken them the Soviets would, either way they would have been utilised to the full. So its a case of being realistic. Which side used them for the greater good.
Oh COME ON!
“The greater good”?!
Which country is the only country to have used nuclear weapons? Obviously, it was a very difficult decision given that Japan would have fought to the last man if their country was invaded but to say the Nazi scientists were used for the greater good is laughable!
They were used to get ahead of other powers, not for the greater good. There IS no greater good in terms of nuclear weapons.
the Irish state facilitated the resettling of ss soldiers in Ireland with the help of the Catholic Church.
with that logic the truman should have been tried for war crimes against the ppl of hiroshima and nagasaki. also bomber harris for the firestorms in dresden hamburg etc created by raf bombing of civilian cities
Dropping the A bomb on Japan was difficult but also the correct decision Vin. Easy to question the only country to use nuclear weapons when it’s not your family or fellow Irishmen who would have to invade Japan.
Vin. None of the German scientists were involved in the Manhattan Project. So your point about who used the bomb is irrelevant.
Would the world have been a better place if the Soviets had taken all those scientists? And as for the greater good you don’t think the plane that takes you on your holidays is a good thing or many of the medicines and medical techniques being used today are a good thing or how about the electronics we take for granted that evolved from those early experiments they are no good either.
The Nuclear Genie was out if the bottle before the war ended. And once out there is no putting it back in.
As Oppenheimer said. “The Atomic Bomb has made a future war unthinkable”.
Do you think without the prospect of MAD that the West and the Soviets would have kept a relative peace throughout the Cold War?
So like it or not Nuclear weapons have enforced peace for 70+ years.
@ Jurgen; that’s basically what I said. It was a difficult decision;the fact that they had to drop two bombs before Japan surrendered showed the commitment of the Japanese to their cause.
@ Mick; are you seriously equating commercial air travel to the work of Nazi rocket scientists? The space missions, maybe, the development of weaponry and ICBMs, definitely, but commercial air travel and modern medicine? Come on.
Yes Vin. It was those scientists that advanced western knowledge of the Jet engine by a decade or more. Compare the Me262 and the Glouster Meteor. Both were invented during the war. Every aviation expert agrees that the Me 262 was by far the superior plane. Faster, lighter, more agile than its British counterpart. The men who designed it went to work for the US. And from those designers came faster, lighter jet engines and what is in use today has evolved from those original designs.
Many of the experiments carried out by Mengele and the other Doctors in the camps weren’t done for the fun of it. Take the experiments in Hypothermia. How many lives of people did they eventually save? And other experiments in genetics that most scientists tend to ignore the part that had their origins in the human experiments the Nazi’s carried out. So yes Aviation, Medicine, Electronics etc. And not only was Nazi research utilised but those experiments carried out by Japanese scientists during the war.
I can’t speak for medicine, Vin, but all almost all modern jet engines are based in no small part on technological advances in this field by German wartime scientists.
Ya, Mick said it better.
so that’s ok then. nazis have contributed greatly to our way of life. makes me feel much better
So that’s ok then. Nazis contributed so much to our modern way of life. I feel so much better now.
Oskar Gröning got approximately one year in prison per 100,000 accessory to murders. Think about that for a second..
He was only an accountant. Sounds like he is only guilty by association. The real criminals are long dead.
Surely I cannot be the only one who sees this article as a mixture of emotion, some history and populism that would not be out of place on today’s Sun or Daily Mail. There is little discussion of the role of this man (SS Member, pacify war civilians before execution), and his role, if any, in decision making that could have saved lives. As stated, the NSDAP were highly centralised with power from the top and an explicit chain of command that all 8m members bought into. It is pure populism to go from Anne Frank, and a discussion of the overall horror of the holocaust to one of a single man carrying out orders in a dictatorship. if this guy had a role like the referred to women in “the reader”, then there may be a requirement for jail (at the time), but in this example there was no attempt at escaping responsibility, and it just looks like revenge – which is wrong.
Well – there are some valid points in terms of his age and his remorse. However, while he is incarcerated – he will never fear beatings, starvation, arbitrary execution, forced marching, his life savings and property will not be confiscated, his family will not be murdered and burnt and the ashes tossed into a pit, he will not perform slave labour and he will not be experimented upon. My great aunt married a holocaust survivor – they met in the USA in 1947. He is still alive. Every single member of his core and extended family was murdered between 1942 and 1945, save for 1 brother. Jailing this man won’t change any of that – but it does recognise what happened and how it was let happen.
I wonder, should the American War machine fail over the next six or seven decades will their soldiers that have preceded over such atrocities as Gauntanamo, Iraq and Yemen be held to account, or would they be allowed leniency on the basis of following orders?
Shut up and let the grown ups have a conversation!
You make a great point Kieran. It’s a shame you’re so mentally challenged you cannot counter a point by referencing the same point. You might be advised to ask your parents why they never thought you manners let allow how come you never inherited intelligence.
It is impossible to have a rational conversation with someone who brings up Guantanamo bay on a thread about Auschwitz and by inference implies a similarly.
So I repeat myself, shut up and let the grown ups have a conversation!
I’m not a nazi. Or a supporter of them in any way shape or form. But he did confess, and he did say that he shouldn’t have done it, I think he should go to prison but for 6 – 18 months
At any stage he could have turned himself in. He would have done his time. He bought this on himself.
em, Niall, he was always open about his role and actively spoke out against holocaust deniers, and has records of requesting to be removed from duties. he was a prisoner of east in the UK after the war, and openly living in Germany since then. the only reason for this trial is he spoke against the deniers and implicated himself. the victims’ children have spoken against this custodial sentence as well, BTW.
Horrific crimes were committed during wars….. This man should definitely be answerable for his role …. But does anyone else still think we have a bit of a holier than thou attitude when looking back at history ….. In another 70 years people will look back at the way we allowed millions of people in the developing world to die while allowing less than 10% to control the majority of its wealth and we also turn a blind eye to atrocities being carried out today like what’s happening in the Gaza Strip…. Anyway time will tell
he should die the same way all those poor jewish people died absolutley horrific to think he played a role in all that and lived a comfortable life untill now. the past will always catch up with u in the end. good riddance to him now rot in hell
Aoife that is just a remarkably dumb comment. do yourself a favour and study this man’s life. He was no Hitler.
“comfortable life”. he was an SS officer in post war germany. he couldn’t go back to his job and ended up at the bottom rung in a glassworks factory and had to start over. plus if you read the testimony of the man he’s haunted by what happened there, he hears the screaming of the people who were executed. he’s also said many times that morally at least he is 100% guilty (it was legal culpability he was unsure of) and he’s spent much of his life debunking holocaust deniers. he may have been a part of something unthinkably evil. but don’t misrepresent him.
Excellent article.
If you are going after war criminals go after them all. Otherwise it is pure hypocrisy.
No one ever mentions the German holocaust that took place after the war ended, 7-12million German men , women and children were tortured, raped and murdered in the most horrific ways, that would rival what happened to the Jews in the Jewish Holocaust.
Am example would be in Czechslovakia, when the PM Benares returned from exile in London he was greeted by the spectacle of hundreds of German POWs hung by their heels to lamp posts and burned alive as human torches to greet the PM from exile. He approved the spectacle. Concentration camps in Eastern Europe didn’t close for business at the end of the war, they were used to incarcerate German civilians, mostly ethnic Germans, who had been robbed and plundered out of their homes. Those in charge of these camps are guilty of crimes far in excess of what the Nazis done. How many of them ever faced justice. The situation got so bad that Russian and American military tried to stop it, but failed.
Did they take the gold fillings out while Jews were still alive or did they wait till they were dead?
He volenteered and was accepted to join the ss. That takes a particular kind of person. His job was to reassure people their belongings were safe before they were gassed. To keep people calm. He liked Jewish people to swine. And he watched a baby get smashed against a train by another ss man with no objections. Fully deserved.
Every British Prime Minister, Home Secretary and Minister of Defence from circa 1970 until well past 2000 knowingly allowed and probably encouraged their Security Forces to murder their own citizens in Northern Ireland. How many of them will die in prison for their crimes??
Personally I think this man should remain in prison for what he done in WW2 but I am always uneasy when those baying for blood are probably shouting the loudest to hide their own guilt!
It’s difficult. if you know the story of Groning it is pretty horrific. but my view of justice is not just that a person should pay penance for their crime, it should also be about rehabilitation, the idea that a person should be of a character that knows they did something wrong. Groning has (for all his sins) admitted freely that morally he was guilty and that he is tormented by his memories there. plus he’s been spending much of the last 60 years telling his story and destroying holocaust deniers. even some auschwitz survivors are wary of sending him to jail because of his history after the camp.
have your say