96-Year-Old Auschwitz Guard Can Go To Prison Despite Age
Image by Getty Image
(JTA) — Prosecutors in the German state of Hanover say that a 96-year-old former Auschwitz guard is fit to serve a prison sentence.
Oskar Groening was convicted and sentenced in July 2015 to four years in prison for his role in the murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews at the camp in Poland. A federal appeals court rejected his appeal in November.
A doctor who examined Groening found him fit to go to prison with appropriate medical care, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office told the Associated Press. The prosecutor’s office then rejected a defense request to excuse Groening from going to jail.
Groening has remained out of prison first for the appeal and then for a decision on his fitness for prison.
A date for Groening to enter prison has not yet been set.
Groening had admitted to being tasked with gathering the money and valuables found in the baggage of murdered Jews and handing it over to his superiors for transfer to Berlin. He said he had guarded luggage on the Auschwitz arrival and selection ramp two or three times in the summer of 1944.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
