UK Daily Mail "Former S.S. Auschwitz guard Oskar Groening told a court he had 'no right' to ask anyone for forgiveness for his service at the extermination camp.
" 'I can only ask the Lord God for forgiveness,' the former Sergeant added before apologising once again to the victims whose searing accounts, he said, affected him deeply.
"His statement came before the powerful testimony of one of the world's most famous Holocaust survivors who lost most of her family in the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.. . .
"Forty five years ago she discovered the photo of herself which now adorns Holocaust museums around the world, including the one in Washington D.C.
"After she told her searing tale of loss and survival she said outside court: 'He is right that only God can forgive him, because I cannot. He was part of the machinery that murdered my family and even today, I can imagine him in his S.S. uniform and it sends chills down my spine." . . .
. . .
"Groening was
on duty in Auschwitz during a 48-day period in 1944 when 300,000
Hungarian Jews were shipped there, most of them gassed within hours of
arrival.
"He
continued to insist that he had been on the arrivals ramp 'only three
or four times' and that his duties were confined to shipping back to
Berlin the money and possessions of the doomed - hence his nickname 'The
Bookkeeper of Auschwitz.'
"In
the statement, he said: 'What happened in Auschwitz, the mass murder,
were known to me through my own actions and later through my interest in
the Holocaust. But the details told here were not known to me.
" 'For
example, I had no idea of the terrible conditions on the transports.
That really shocked me. The descriptions by the survivors and the
relatives of the victims also left an extremely strong impression on me.
"'What happened in Auschwitz has been brought before my eyes once again. " . . .
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