{"id":27596,"date":"2015-09-26T18:05:27","date_gmt":"2015-09-26T16:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=27596"},"modified":"2015-09-22T13:24:40","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T11:24:40","slug":"how-nazi-guard-oskar-groning-escaped-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=27596","title":{"rendered":"How Nazi guard Oskar Gr\u00f6ning escaped justice."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>How Nazi guard Oskar Gr\u00f6ning escaped justice in 1947 for crimes at Auschwitz<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Owen Bowcott <\/strong>in London
\nand Kate Connolly <\/strong>in Berlin<\/span><\/p>\n

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Exclusive: UN war crimes files reveal that SS guard Gr\u00f6ning faced trial after the war for his<\/strong><\/span>
\n role in the Holocaust but US cold war fears led to Nazis being released<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\nSS Unterscharf\u00fchrer Oskar Gr\u00f6ning. His UN War Crimes Commission file shows that he was one of 300 Auschwitz staff whom Poland intended to prosecute. Photograph: Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau\/AP<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Oskar Gr\u00f6ning, the convicted Auschwitz death camp guard, escaped prosecution in Britain nearly 70 years ago because of the United States\u2019 desire to fight the cold war, according to newly discovered documents (pdf).<\/span><\/p>\n

Researchers in London combing through the archives of the UN War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) have discovered that charges against him were being prepared just as the entire judicial process against Germans accused of committing war crimes was closed down after political intervention from above.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gr\u00f6ning escaped justice until this week when the former SS bookkeeper at Auschwitz, now aged 94, was finally found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people and sentenced to four years in prison. It is likely to be one of the last Holocaust trials.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although he did not kill anyone while working at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during the second world war, prosecutors argued that by sorting banknotes taken from the trainloads of arriving Jews he helped support a regime responsible for mass murder.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gr\u00f6ning had admitted moral guilt but said it was up to the court to decide whether he was legally guilty. The trial raised the issue of whether those deemed to be small cogs in the Nazi machinery, but who did not actively participate in the killing of 6 million Jews, were guilty of crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n

British forces captured Gr\u00f6ning in Germany at the end of the war and, probably as an act of revenge, initially imprisoned him in an old Nazi concentration camp. The historian Laurence Rees recorded that he was shipped to England in 1946. Gr\u00f6ning worked as a forced labourer but reportedly \u201cate good food and earned money to spend\u201d. He joined a YMCA choir and \u201cfor four months travelled through the Midlands and Scotland giving concerts\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rees wrote that he \u201csang German hymns and traditional English folk songs\u201d to appreciative British audiences who competed to have one of the Germans stay with them overnight.<\/span><\/p>\n

Justice, however, was attempting to catch up with him. Records discovered by Dan Plesch, the director of the centre for international studies and diplomacy at Soas, University of London, show that Gr\u00f6ning\u2019s name appears in UNWCC files dated 6 March 1947.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Gr\u00f6ning\u2019s
\nGr\u00f6ning\u2019s entry in the UNWCC file, listing him as a camp guard. Photograph: UNWCC\/SOAS<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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He is described as SS Unterscharf\u00fchrer, which translates as junior squad commander and roughly equates to senior corporal or sergeant. His date of birth is given as 10 June 1921. The \u201cdate and place of alleged crime\u201d is entered as Auschwitz 1940-45. The words \u201ccomplicity in murder and ill-treatment\u201d are written underneath.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gr\u00f6ning\u2019s war crime is recorded as \u201ccommon design\u201d \u2013 the term used by investigators at the time to denote conspiracy in acts said to include \u201ckillings, death by gas chamber, cremations of living persons and corpses, use of human beings as guinea pigs for medical experimentation \u2026 beatings, tortures, starvation, abuse and indignities\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

His file number, 4771\/P\/G\/139-137, shows that he was number 137 in a list of 300 Auschwitz staff whom the Polish government intended to prosecute for war crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another recovered document is the minutes of a UNWCC meeting held at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 20 March 1947. It considered, among other cases, those of the 300 Auschwitz staff on the list drawn up by Dr Marian Muszkat, the commission\u2019s Polish representative.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gr\u00f6ning was one of those listed in the proceedings as \u201cS\u201d \u2013 meaning suspect. \u201cThe commission was making a prima facie judgment as to whether there was a case to answer,\u201d explained Plesch, who has examined the files. \u201cThe prosecution was required to give evidence of what the defence [in that category of cases] would be. It wrote: \u2018Probable defence that they are acting under orders.\u2019\u201d<\/span>
\n\"Oskar
\nOskar Gr\u00f6ning listens to the verdict at his trial in L\u00fcneburg, Germany. He was convicted on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder and given a four-year sentence. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz\/AP<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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The secret archive, now at Soas, contains lists of internationally approved war crimes indictments of tens of thousands of Nazis. Sixteen states, including the UK and US, worked together in London on the investigation of more than 36,000 international criminal cases between 1943 and 1948.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGr\u00f6ning\u2019s name popped up when I searched,\u201d Plesch said. The process of drawing up a formal summons against the captured camp guard, however, coincided with diplomatic manoeuvres to wind down the UNWCC.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 24 April 1947, Sir Robert Craigie, a Foreign Office official who was present at the meeting the previous month that considered Gr\u00f6ning\u2019s case, announced that the commission should not take any more cases.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe priority became to rebuild Germany,\u201d Plesch said. Consequently, a decision was taken, despite fierce opposition by countries such as Poland and Yugoslavia, to release SS suspects being held. Even though Gr\u00f6ning was indicted as a suspected war criminal almost 70 years ago, he was never tried at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe grand lie is that we never knew anything\u201d about these Nazi suspects, Plesch said. \u201cThe dangerous myth is that nothing was ever done except against the Nazi leadership at Nuremberg war trials, but there was a huge effort by many countries that would have seen the likes of Gr\u00f6ning face trial, had it not been for the shift in policy from America.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was said that the west had to release these Nazis to mobilise Germany against communism but why that mobilisation should involve Nazis has never been explained.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe British were not keen to pick arguments with the Americans. The last attempt at pursuing justice was a hunt for the camp guards responsible for executing the Allied inmates who took part in the \u2018Great Escape\u2019 from Stalag Luft III.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy that stage no one was going to prosecute minnows like Gr\u00f6ning. He went back to Germany and was released.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

By the early 1950s, virtually all of those being held had been set free.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another victim of the sudden ideological obsession with the cold war was the film made by Alfred Hitchcock about Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It was never shown when completed due to fear of upsetting the Germans at a time when the Soviet spectre was looming.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGr\u00f6ning should have been punished at the time,\u201d Plesch added. \u201cIt was a mistaken policy that anti-communism meant liberating the Nazis.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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How Nazi guard Oskar Gr\u00f6ning escaped justice in 1947 for crimes at Auschwitz Owen Bowcott in London and Kate Connolly in Berlin Exclusive: UN war crimes files reveal that SS guard Gr\u00f6ning faced trial after the war for his role in the Holocaust but US cold war fears led to Nazis being released SS Unterscharf\u00fchrer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27596"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27606,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27596\/revisions\/27606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}