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Ex-Auschwitz guard, 94, is sentenced to jail

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[h=4]Ex-Auschwitz guard, 94, is sentenced to jail[/h]A guard who worked at the Auschwitz concentration camp was convicted in Germany on Wednesday on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder and given a four-year prison sentence.

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A 94-year-old former SS sergeant who served at the Auschwitz death camp has been convicted on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder.
The state court in the northern German city of Lueneburg gave Oskar Groening a four-year sentence. USA TODAY


Former Nazi SS officer Oskar Groening listens to the verdict of his trial on July 15, 2015, at court in Lueneburg, northern Germany.(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)


Seventy years after the end of World War II, a guard who worked at the Auschwitz concentration camp was convicted in Germany on Wednesday on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder and given a four-year prison sentence.
Oskar Groening, 94, nicknamed the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz," may be one of the last people to face trial in Germany for Nazi-era crimes. He trained as a bank clerk before joining Germany's SS military unit as a soldier.
A judge in the northern German city of Lueneburg convicted Groening for his role at the camp following testimony that he presided over prisoners' belongings and collected their money before they were marched to their death in gas chambers.
He did not dispute the charges and admitted "moral guilt" for the atrocities. His lawyers argued he should be acquitted because he did not actively facilitate mass murder.
Judge Franz Kompisch nevertheless concluded that Groening played a part in the camp that allowed the Nazi regime to murder hundreds of thousands of Jews.
Groening did not issue a statement or speak to reporters after the verdict. But speaking to the BBC in 2005 for a documentary, Groening said he saw the gas chambers at Auschwitz. "I was on the ramp when the selections (for the chambers) took place," he said.
Given Groening's age, it was not clear if he would ultimately serve any time in prison. Both sides have a week to appeal the ruling. The four-year sentence exceeds the three-and-a-half years sought by the prosecution.
"For us, it was not a big question of whether it is three, four, five, six years in prison — that was never a topic," Thomas Walther, a lawyer who represents 51 co-plaintiffs, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "It is an excellent verdict."
Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, an organization that represents Jewish interests in 100 countries, said it was the correct decision to put Groening on trial despite his old age.
"Albeit belatedly, justice has been done. Mr. Groening was only a small cog in the Nazis' death machine, but without the actions of people like him, the mass murder of millions of Jews and others would not have been possible," Lauder said.
"We urge authorities (in Germany) — and in other European countries — not to relent in the quest for bringing the perpetrators of the biggest crime in the history of mankind to justice," he added.
Of the approximately six million Jewish men, women and children killed during the Holocaust, around 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz in then-German-occupied Poland.
The case against Groening related to a period between May 1944 and July 1944.
Angela Orosz-Richt, 70, a Holocaust survivor born in Auschwitz who now lives in Montreal, Canada, testified at Groening's trial last month.
"I thank Germany for eventually putting him on trial, although that should have happened decades ago, and although many other perpetrators never had to stand trial for their crimes," she said in emailed comments to USA TODAY.
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