A 96-year-old convicted Auschwitz sergeant filed a plea for clemency due to his old age, according to a report Monday.
Oskar Groening, known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” who assisted in 300,000 murders, was sentenced to four years in jail in 2015, reported the Daily Mail. While Groening admits that he is guilty, he wants to take a plea for clemency due to his old age, since he would not survive jail.
Groening’s plea for clemency has been passed to public prosecutors, according to Christian Lauenstein, spokesman for the justice ministry in the northern state of Lower Saxony.
Groening, who started working at the death camp in 1942 at age 21, sent banknotes found in the victims’ luggage to SS Officers from Auschwitz. He also allegedly tried to deceive the new transports that Auschwitz was not a death camp by hiding the previous victims’ luggage, according to prosecutors in Lueneburg in northern Germany, reported the BBC. Despite Groening’s contributions to the mass murder, he did not kill anyone himself and asserts he is not an “accomplice”.
Jewish groups assert that there should be no statute of limitations due to Groening contributing to the mass genocide of the Holocaust.
“Although more than 70 years have passed since the liberation of the Nazi death camps, this trial reminds us that there is no statute of limitations for those responsible for Nazi horrors and demonstrates the constant need to guard against anti-Semitism, racism, and hate,” said Dr. Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress explains that the trial has historical significance.(RELATED: I’m A Jew. I Had No Idea I’d Be Spending Christmas Among Neo-Nazis).
Approximately 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz. ALSO WATCH:
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