Oskar Groening was 21 when he worked in the death camp at Auschwitz. He wasn’t a guard or directly involved in the murders, but he knew what was going on and by staying at his job there he was a party to it. That job was to divest the people brought to Auschwitz of all their possessions, particularly their money, then count it, record it and send it on to Nazi Head Office to be used in the war effort. And so the money which those people brought with them helped pay to kill them.

Now Groening is 93 and standing trial on around 300,000 counts of being an accessory to murder. He hasn’t been hiding out in Brazil or some other South American country, like other Nazi war criminals. He has been right there in Germany all this time, working for an insurance company, and he didn’t even bother to keep a low profile or conceal his involvement in what happened at Auschwitz. He testified as a witness in the trials of Nazi war criminals. Ten years ago he was interviewed by Der Spiegel, and said by way of explanation for what he did that it was perfectly understandable if you truly believe that the Jews are the enemy, that there is a Jewish conspiracy to ruin Germany and Europe.

I listened to his explanation and couldn’t help but notice the parallels between what he said and the identical reasoning I see on the comments-boards of Maltese news sites and on Facebook almost every day: that there is a Muslim conspiracy to ruin Malta and undermine Europe. That is why ignorance of history and lack of insight and of general knowledge are so very dangerous. His interviewer asked him why he thought that the children were so dangerous that they had to be killed too. Groening’s response, said with a seriousness bordering on strange naivety, was that it wasn’t the children themselves who were dangerous, but the Jewish adults they stood to become if they were allowed to live. And so they had to be killed.

So why is Oskar Groening being prosecuted only now, when the authorities have known about him for decades and he has had no difficulty with explaining how and why he was involved? It’s because of a recent court judgement which now makes it possible for people like him, who had what were effectively desk jobs in the camps, and who were not directly sadistic to Auschwitz prisoners or physically involved in their murder, to be prosecuted as accessories to murder. That is only right, and the pity is that the judgement did not come earlier, allowing the prosecution of so very many who have died after living long lives unmolested by the long arm of the law.

There are some who say, after watching the pathetic sight of a man aged 93 inching his awkward way into court using a walking-aid, that all of this is pointless, that the trial is cruel in itself, and what can be gained by putting a man his age, at the end of his life, through that. It looks vindictive, they say. Yes, some of those initial feelings cannot be avoided. The man is no longer a threat to society and much of what we feel about those who commit hideous crimes is to do with fear that they might carry on. Clearly, he cannot.  But then again, if he were allowed to die without due process, what message does that convey? That heroin addicts who mug old ladies and steal their handbags end up in prison, but a man of some intelligence who sits in a death camp, day after day, taking the possessions off people who arrive to be killed, standing by while they are killed and by his own admission feeling nothing, lives until the age of 93 without being prosecuted, let alone imprisoned, because there is no law under which he can be tried conclusively.

During his first public appearance for this trial this week, Groening described how he waited with other men from the SS for the death-train to arrive at the camp. As the people got off, a baby started to wail in distress. An SS officer grabbed the baby and smashed its head against the train repeatedly “until it stopped crying”. Until it stopped crying, he said, and not until it died. “I didn’t think that was a good thing,” he said. He also described how he saw people being herded stark naked into a cottage that had been converted into a gas chamber. They were locked in, he said, and then one of the guards put on a gas mark, opened a vent in the roof, and emptied a can through it. Immediately there was a lot of screaming, he said, and then there was silence. But he felt nothing.

Groening was at Auschwitz for just three months. He must have felt something, because he asked to be transferred elsewhere. During those three months, May to July 1944, almost half a million Hungarians were transported into the death camp and gassed immediately. Groening told the court yesterday that so many trains arrived that often two trains would have to wait, with all doors closed (they were cargo/cattle trains, so there were no windows) until the people on one train were “processed”. By processed, he meant killed.

"The capacity of the gas chambers and the capacity of the crematoria were quite limited. Someone said that 5,000 people were processed in 24 hours but I didn't verify this. I didn't know," he told the court. "For the sake of order we waited until train 1 was entirely processed and finished."

The German system apparently does not allow for pleas of guilty or not guilty, but as the trial began on Tuesday, Oskar Groening said that he considers himself to be “morally guilty” and that it is up to the court to decide whether he is “legally guilty”. At this late stage in his life, imprisonment – he faces up to 15 years – will make no real difference and might even serve as a form of catharsis for any guilt he now feels.

More than 60 survivors of Auschwitz are participating in the trial as co-plaintiffs as permitted under the German system. One of them is Eva Kor, who now lives in North America and who was just 10 at the time. She was taken to the death camp with her parents, twin sister and two older sisters. Her parents and older sisters were taken directly to be killed, but Kor and her twin were taken to the evil Josef Mengele to be used in his obsessive human experiments on twins. "All I remember is my mother’s arms stretched out in despair as she was pulled away from us," Korsaid. "I never even got to say goodbye."

independent.com.mt