In 2011, I was surprised to get an e-mail from someone in Philadelphia asking me to get in contact with a Mr. Thomas Walther, an attorney in Germany. He was one of two main prosecutors of World War II criminals. When we finally talked, he asked me if I would be willing to join a group of Auschwitz survivors who were being asked to fill out testimonials that Oscar Groening had been the bookkeeper in Auschwitz during the time I was there. He did not promise a positive outcome of the trial, but he promised that they would put forth their best effort.
The next time I spoke with him, he asked that I come to Germany, all expenses paid, to testify at the trial. I declined, and he understood when I explained that I had not been able to return to Germany—or even go anywhere near its borders—since my liberation.
The prosecutors were trying to overturn a 1969 ruling that being a staff member at Auschwitz was not enough of a reason to secure a conviction. The ruling had been challenged in Lüneburg in 2011 with the landmark conviction of John Demjanjuk, a death camp guard, who was living in the United States and working in an automobile factory. Although he died in 2012, before his appeal could be heard, the Federal Court of Justice did not reverse his conviction. That case was not exactly the same as the case against Groening because Demjanjuk was a Nazi guard, not just a staff member.
Thus, when Groening was convicted and he was sentenced to five years in prison, depending on the state of his health, a new precedent was set. The conviction changed all previous convictions because the verdict by the lower court in Lüneburg is final, and the ruling is now a legal precedent in prosecuting former Nazis. When I received the e-mail in April 2015, alerting me of this news of the Groening trial, I felt as if a new era had arrived.
But maybe it’s not quite here yet. Oscar Groening is now 95 years old, and he is still at home, waiting to hear about his jail time.
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