The court decided to send to prison the 96-year-old “accountant of Auschwitz”, convicted of involvement in the murder of 300 thousand people

Former SS member Oskar Groening, known as the "accountant of Auschwitz", will serve his sentence of four years in prison despite being 96 years old. This is reported by the newspaper Die Zeit.

In 2015, Groening was found to be an accomplice in the murders of 300,000 people in Auschwitz during World War II and sentenced to four years in prison. Groening contested the verdict, and until recently it was not clear whether he would go to jail due to his advanced age.

The court dismissed Groening's appeal, concluding that he was fit to serve his sentence. In this case, all the "special needs" of the 96-year-old prisoner in prison will be taken into account, the court promised.

• Oskar Groening worked in Auschwitz from 1942-1944. His duties were to collect the money and valuables of the murdered prisoners, monitor their safety and send them to Berlin.
• After the war, Groening became one of the few former Nazis who spoke openly about his involvement in concentration camps. He has been publicly critical of Holocaust denial. “I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria,” he said in a 2005 BBC documentary about Auschwitz.
• In 2014, Groening was accused of being involved in the murders of 300,000 Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz in 1944. At the trial, he claimed that he was responsible only for the things of the prisoners of Auschwitz and had nothing to do with the killing of people. “I share a moral sense of guilt, but whether I am guilty under criminal law is up to you,” told the judges. Groening