Should This 94 Year Old Have Been Jailed?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3161043/71-years-helped-Nazis-kill-300-000-Jews-bookkeeper-Auschwitz-finally-faces-justice-German-court-delivers-verdict-om-Oskar-Groening-morning.html

/// While none of the victims were able to recall seeing Groening at the camp, he was charged with being accessory to the killings because he was essential to the running of Auschwitz. ///

Perhaps if they could find the camps electricians, plumbers etc, they should also be jailed?

[sir.prize]

Should he be jailed? Most definitely.

[murraymints]

absoblumminlutely !

[ummmm]

Was he working with a gun to his head?

[retrocop]

Well the victims got their pound of flesh. As a point of interest I wonder if Simon Weisenthal's centre pursue the civilian train drivers who were instrumental in delivering the victims?

[saintpeter48]

No, he should not have been jailed - He should've been shot by firing squad!! Evil man, end of!!

[EDDIE51]

I don't suppose he had the choice to say 'Stick your job' and walk out!
If he had refused to do the job he would probably have been shot himself.

[ummmm]

Was it a case of turn a blind eye or get killed? Most people would opt for the former.

[Baldric]

Doesn't matter what Job he did, he was a part of it, of course he should be Jailed!

[Retrochic]

The Nazi regime was a regime of terror, the majority of people working for them out of terror for the safety of themselves and their families. This man was involved but was no more than a clerk responsible for recording the monies and items taken from the Jews. No he should not have been jailed it is ridiculous. I'm sure his memories of the place have haunted him enough to make sure he does not Rest in Peace.

[Canary42]

Where do you stop ? How about the Duke of Windsor, shouldn't we have jailed him, obviously in cahoots with Hitler.

[retrocop]

ummmm
In that case he would be working with a gun to his head. He was a clerk who disliked what was going on around him. He asked two or three times to be transferred to a fighting unit and finally got his wish and was wounded in battle.
He got drunk regularly in Auschwitz.Who wouldn't to blot out the enormity of evil going on around him.
He may have joined the SS before Concentration camps were turned into death camps on an Industrial scale. Sachenhausen was a camp of the early 1930's but was not a death camp although prisoners died there.
He may have got caught up in a roller coaster of events that he realised that it wasn't what he signed up for.
He never pulled a trigger in the camp or administered Zyklon B. He kept meticulous records which the Germans are renowned for.
He did not change his name or disguise himself after the war but seemed to show great remorse and sadness that he was caught up in this holocaust.
Apart from neo-nazis today and a few cranks no one is denying the holocaust so we don't really need reminding of it by this trial that serves what?
There must be hundreds of Germans and Slavs who had work in the camp but did not kill who were not subsequently imprisoned after tribunals were held.
Some Nazi dealers of death went across to the USA and helped their rocket programme into space.

[ummmm]

Retro...so should he be jailed or not?

[retrocop]

I believe not.I feel it serves no purpose.He has his regrets to be associated with it let alone he actually killed anyone personally. As stated I think he,like others,may have got caught up in events that they had never dreamed of.

[Gromit]

Of course he should - he was an accessory.

Would you spare the getaway driver jail because he didn't go in the bank to rob it?

[retrocop]

The getaway driver volunteered knowing that he was driving to a bank robbery.
Can you say that Groening volunteered to join the SS originally knowing full well he would be employed in a death camp?
To join the SS was to join Hitler's Bodyguard. An elite organisation with lots of perks at first.The role of the SS then widened to involve a lot more tasks as the war rolled on.

[beso]

The "gun to the head" scenario is largely a myth.

Just yesterday I was listening to a radio story about nurses who worked killing handicapped people. It was clear that they were not forced to work in that job and could be transferred to other hospitals without penalty.

Most of the nurses were women. Few were ever prosecuted because many people refused to believe that a woman would participate in such atrocities. Evne those who were convicted were often let out after serving a fraction of their sentence.

However it is clear the German people were intensely indoctrinated into the Nazi philosophy, many from childhood, before it ramped up to extreme levels during the war.

The most interesting point was made by the woman who researched this history. She would like to think that she would have stood up against it if she had been in the situation but never having been there she really didn't know for sure.

[Gromit]

He worked at Auschwitz. It is inconceivable he did not know what his work was for. He was part of the industrial killing apparatus. Time is no escape from the crimes of his past.

[retrocop]

I think we all realise he worked in Auschwitz. He admitted as such. Did he know he was going to be posted to Auschwitz,which probably was yet to be built, when he joined the SS and was found to have clerical skills ?

[ludwig]

It's strange how before the war the Nazis appeared to be really popular in Germany, but afterwards you couldn't find barely a single German that was anything other than completely opposed to them.