Oskar Groeining 'Bookkeeper of Auschwitz' Finally To Be In Jail

The constitutional court of Germany on Friday rejected a plea by Oskar Groening's lawyer against sending the 96-year-old to jail. The court refused to accept the claim that Groening was too old and weak to be in jail.

Groening, a former Auschwitz concentration camp guard, played a key role in the mass murders that took place at the Nazi death camp in Poland during the World War II. He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment in July 2015 for being complicit in the murder of 300,000 Jews.

Groening was popularly known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz” as he kept an account of money taken from the prisoners when they arrived at the camp.

After Groening’s claims for release were rejected by lower courts in Lüneburg and Celle last year, his lawyer Hans Holtermann submitted an appeal in the federal court mid-December.

Meanwhile, Groening was free since the time he was convicted as his lawyer argued that imprisonment at this age would violate his constitutional “right to life.”

According to a report in Aol.com, upholding the ruling of the lower court, the judges wrote, “The plaintiff has been found guilty of being accessory to murder in 300,000 related cases, meaning there is a particular importance to carrying out the sentence the state has demanded.”

“The high age of the applicant is in itself not sufficient to refrain from enforcing the criminal penalty,” the court said, according to Yahoo News.

The court found Groening’s complaint of violation of fundamental right to life and physical safety baseless and had no substantial reason to overturn the rulings of the lower courts.

The Supreme Court explained that as per the German law, a sentence to jail could be terminated only if a prisoner’s health deteriorates and the same applied to Groening, the USA Today reported.

The court also said Groening was part of the “machinery of death.” He could be convicted as an accessory to the murders that took place as he was responsible for collecting money stolen from the victims of the Nazis and guarding the victims’ luggage in the camp, it stated.

Oskar Groening was born on Jun. 10, 1921 in Nienberg, Lower Saxony in northwest Germany. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power, he joined the Hitler Youth, a youth organization of the Nazi Party. Groening grew up in a disciplined environment and was fascinated with the military from an early age. In the 1930s, he joined the Scharnhorst, a youth organization in Stahlhelm. After graduating from high school in 1938, he started working as a trainee bank clerk. In 1940, he joined the Waffen-SS, as an SS salary administrator. He was sent to work at Auschwitz in 1942, at the age of 21.