Update: Oskar Groening, 94, was sentenced to four years imprisonment for being an accessory to the murderous machinery of Auschwitz concentration camp. The case against Groening featured testimony from several Holocaust survivors. Witnesses said they could not forgive Groening eventhough he was a relatively small cog. Because of the advanced years of survivors and captors, Groening may be one of the last war-time Nazis to be prosecuted for their activities in the "final solution". An estimated one million people lost their lives at Auschwitz.
{03.02.15}Germany will put another elderly Nazi on trial for his war crimes. On Monday a German court said a former SS guard at Auzschwitz, Oskar Groening age 93, will stand trial in April on charges that he was an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people at the camp and supporting the Nazi regime economically. He processed the belongings of the victims, but claims he never personally participated in the mass executions. He earned the grim sobriquet, "the Accountant of Auschwitz".
Prosecutors are in a race against death to find and prosecute war-time Nazis who escaped punishment. Bringing criminal prosecutions based on evidence that is seventy years or more old and often fragmentary is difficult and risky. In December a court dismissed a case against a former Waffen-SS soldier accused of being involved in the largest massacre in occupied territory at Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944. The successful prosecution of former camp guard John Demjanjuk for his crimes in 2011 prompted prosecutors to reopen investigation files of hundreds of former death camp guards. {08.05.13, Old Nazis with No Place to Hide} Demjanuk was sentenced to five years in prison but was released early and died while appealing his conviction.