The trial of Oskar Groening, the 93-year-old former SS member accused of assisting in the deaths of at least 300,000 people at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, has been suspended on Wednesday because he is ill, reports DPA.
Proceedings that were due to continue Thursday will not now take place after a court-appointed doctor determined Groening's ability to participate in them was limited, a statement from the court in the northern town of Lueneberg said. Further details were not given, but the court said it intended to continue with the main proceedings on May 26.
The court sittings have been reduced to less than three hours a day since last week because of Groening's ill health. Groening did not appear in court on May 7 owing to an infection and extreme debility after proceedings had been interrupted the previous day when he appeared very weak.
Groening has long admitted knowing from the beginning of his tenure that Auschwitz-Birkenau was an extermination camp. Earlier, at the end of his 50-minute speech, the so-called “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” expressed his remorse for the role he had played in the Nazi killing machine, an admission that few had expected he would make at all, let alone just a couple of hours into the start of his trial for being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews.
