Auschwitz functionary jailed: Appropriate sentencing

THIS week a 94 year-old man was sent to jail for four years because of his complicity in the murder of 300,000 Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz. Oskar Gröning, a former SS officer, was a bookkeeper who kept records of the personal belongings stolen from concentration camp inmates before they were murdered. 

As trains arrived at the Nazi death camp, a 21-year-old Gröning plundered suitcases to finance the Third Reich. He was so efficient that he was dubbed the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz”.

In a Lüneburg courtroom, he made himself “morally culpable”. “I stand before the victims with remorse and humility and ask for forgiveness,” he said.