A 96-year-old former Auschwitz guard has been found fit for incarceration, two years after being sentenced to a four-year jail term.
Oskar Groening was sentenced to four years in prison in 2015 for his role in murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews while serving as a guard at the Nazi concentration camp.
Known as the "accountant of Auschwitz,” Groening has admitted to gathering the property of Jews who had been murdered at the camp. He has previously stated that "there is no question that I made myself morally complicit.”
Groening’s conviction was made possible by the 2011 conviction in Munich of Sobibor guard Ivan Demjanju, who was the first convicted in Germany for service in a concentration camp without “proof of a specific crime against a specific victim.” After the Demjanjuk, merely proving service in a camp became sufficient for a conviction.
In related news, last week the Canadian government announced that it would revoke the citizenship of a former SS soldier who served as an interpreter for the Einsatzkommando 10a mobile killing unit during the Holocaust.
