BERLIN (AP) — A 93-year-old man has been charged with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder for serving as an SS guard at the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp, prosecutors said Monday.
Oskar Groening is accused of helping operate the death camp in occupied Poland between May and June 1944, when some 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought there and at least 300,000 almost immediately gassed to death.
Groening, 93, has spoken openly about his experiences at the Nazi death camp. In 2005, he recalled to Der Spiegel, “I saw another SS soldier grab the baby by the legs. He smashed the baby’s head against the iron side of a truck until it was silent.”
In his job dealing with the belongings stolen from camp victims, prosecutors said among other things he was charged with helping collect and tally money that was found.
"He helped the Nazi regime benefit economically, and supported the systematic killings," state prosecutors in the city of Hannover said in a statement.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/93-ye...-guard-charged
Does anyone else feel like we pursue the underlings too aggressively? This guy was a guard. Of course he should have not been apart of this, but honestly how many people would have the courage and principles defying self-preservation to defy an order in the case it would get you killed?
I'd like to think I would, but hell I've never been put in a position like that so who knows, realistically it's just me thinking higher of myself.
Sure there are a few heroic people in every lot but I guarantee you the majority of the people condemning them would have done the same thing and just rolled with it. Not to mention, this would have made sense decades ago but hell this guy is now 93.