Auschwitz Guard, Now 96, Denied Clemency For Role In Murder Of Hungarian Jews
Oscar Groening Image by Getty
(JTA) — A plea for clemency filed by a 96-year-old former Auschwitz guard ordered by Germany’s highest court to serve his prison sentence for his role in the murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews has been denied.
“The clemency request has been denied,” Wiebke Bethke, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors’ office in Lüneburg told news agency epd.
Groening could still appeal his clemency request to the Justice Ministry of Lower Saxony, the northern German state where his 2015 trial took place, German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported. He is expected to go to prison by the end of the month.
Groening, known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz,” was convicted and sentenced in July 2015 to four years in jail for his role in the murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews at the concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. A federal appeals court rejected his appeal a year ago. He had remained free while waiting for a determination of his fitness to serve time in prison after requesting that the sentence be suspended.
Germany’s constitutional court, the country’s highest court, last month rejected Groening’s appeal, ruling that he could receive appropriate health care in prison, and that his jail sentence could be “interrupted” should there be a change in the nonagenarian’s health.
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.
During the trial, Groening asked for forgiveness while acknowledging that only the courts could decide when it came to criminal guilt.
A message from our Publisher & CEO 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 so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
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
